Offering products that tap into customers’ passions will earn their loyalty, says Jacqueline Gold

As a woman, I always found my liking of Girls Aloud’s music and my concern over the many ups and downs in the members’ personal lives a bit of a dilemma.

When I mentioned my admiration for Cheryl, Kimberley, Sarah, Nicola and Nadine to my male friends, I was surprised by their encouragement. Of course, their latent motivation for doing so is rooted in music snobbery: proof that us womenfolk are easily pleased. It gives them an opportunity to assert their masculinity and patronise us with what becomes a relationship-long music educational programme based on their tastes.

But there was an exception to the rule that real music lovers couldn’t like Girls Aloud, and that was when they chose to enjoy their music ironically.

As a retailer I’m fascinated by our customers’ motivation for purchase. There are an infinite number of reasons for the motivation and timing of a purchase, and you can pay some big, important sounding agencies a lot of money for them to help you second-guess the answers.

Unfortunately, much of what they will tell you is based on the quantifiable information they can garner from their questionnaires. The really good agencies will more intuitively help you spot trends – the significant niches you can profit from by adjusting your offer and marketing accordingly.

By nature, niches are quite personal – often linked to hobbies, passions and pastimes, or with a stronger emotional connection to our customers. These niches say more about our customer than perhaps the products they buy in greater volume, like groceries, to which they have a more distant relationship.

As a consequence, these niches are likely to be long-standing and offer opportunities for retailers to forge great loyalty with their customers. One of these trends, evident by the success of Pierce Brosnan singing in Mamma Mia, is “ironic consumption”.

To some degree this has been a factor in the success we enjoy with our Naughty Nurse, French Maid and other dressing-up outfits. It’s slightly disingenuous to say that these products are simply a bit of fun, as it doesn’t really get to the heart or bottom (depending on your perspective) of why our customers love them.

Wearing them, or practising your best Girls Aloud move, says that you have a sense of humour, are confident and perhaps most importantly gives you an anecdote to share with your friends.

How many of us have products or services, outside of the truly cutting edge or brand new, that can give our customers that? Niche, rich seam, call it what you will, but it’s a potentially recession-bucking opportunity within the Bermuda Triangle of lost sales through which we’re all trying to navigate.

  • Jacqueline Gold is chief executive of Ann Summers