The Need for Change in Retail Marketing Strategy

1. Find yourself. What's your unique or hard-to-copy offering? This may take a little detective work; you might have to go back to the early days and figure it out. The point is that few companies were started with the intent of competing solely on price. Therefore, some ability to deliver "more, better, faster" is in your company's DNA somewhere.
2. Develop your differentiators. Once you've determined what your unique value is to consumers, focus on making those the best they can be. If it's service, then make that the focal point for every associate, from the CEO to the newest hire. Your differentiator must be valuable to your target audience.
3. Deliver. Every day. No matter what. And when you don't, own up to the error, make it right and fix the problem. These sound like simple ideas, and they are. But bringing these simple ideas to life to build a path to success is anything but easy. Getting there takes commitment, focus and a resistance to reverting back to old habits.

The greatest challenge to making large-scale changes, especially in the area of strategy, is inertia. Old habits are hard to break, and when the benefit of changing those habits isn't immediate — as in the case of building a new strategy — it's all too easy to revert to that comfortable process that you don't have to think too hard about.