Earning customers' trust is the name of the game

[Kristijntje]

The good news is that the ultimate drivers of customer choice tend to fall logically into two categories: cost and risk. Cost-oriented factors include convenience, ease of doing business and product support.

Risk-oriented factors involve trust, confidence and the strength of relationships. It sounds straightforward enough. However, in many of Asia's industry sectors, customer knowledge as a discipline has a long way to develop. Therefore, a number of sources of risk and cost to customers tend to be overlooked.

In fact, most companies never attend to such costs, but they are real. Managers who give thought to ways to cut these interaction costs will likely uncover innovative ways of raising customers' gain.

For instance, in the customer's mind, cost is a lot more than the sales price of a product. In reality, customers incur costs while transacting or interacting with the seller, and also while integrating the product sold into their own products or operations. Products themselves, even when they are very good, rarely provide all the benefits that customers are seeking...

full article: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/r86y...Game.xhtml

[Boucher]

Building trust is the most important aspect of doing business, at least for us little guys/gals.

They have partnered with other organizations to provide a unique bundle of products that is optimal for their customers.

This is key to my business right now as I realize I can only expect so much exposure doing it on my own. Finding businesses to work with that have the "name brand" recognition to promote my products to people I just can't reach is the difference between living comfortably and hitting the big time.