A recent personal logical thought: if I already have a store, how can I know the reasons why business is not doing well? After thinking for two days, I finally figured out the solution. It can be done through research and then reverse logical reasoning.
Here’s an example:
Step 1: List all the possible reasons that could lead to repeat customers, such as:
1. Good product variety
2. Taste that matches customer preferences
3. Good store location, proximity
4. Good service attitude
5. Attractive staff members (handsome or beautiful servers)
6. Nice store decor
7. Affordable prices
Step 2: Give this list of reasons to regular customers who frequent the store to vote on what they think matters most.
Step 3: Reorder the results based on the votes, for example, the result might be:
1. Affordable prices
2. Attractive staff members
3. Good store location
4. Taste that matches preferences
5. Good service attitude
6. Nice store decor
7. Good product variety
Step 4: Reverse logical reasoning: the three main reasons why new customers don’t turn into repeat customers are likely the last three:
1. Product variety is not good enough
2. Store decor is not attractive enough
3. Service attitude is not good enough
After knowing the reasons, improvements can be made to increase repeat customers.
There’s an important logical mistake to avoid. You should never directly ask repeat customers what’s wrong because those who become repeat customers have already been attracted to the store by some factor. Asking them what’s wrong will lead to survivorship bias. Instead, you should ask them what attracted them to come back, and then use reverse logical reasoning to figure out why people who visited once don’t return.
To put it simply: you should ask those who returned frequently what attracted them to come back, and then use reverse reasoning to deduce the reasons why those who only came once didn’t return.
If you can’t understand the logic here, I recommend studying the theory of survivorship bias before revisiting this logic.