The Costly Error of Focusing only on Moment-of-Purchase Marketing

You can’t live in a big city like New York or San Francisco without having some experience with panhandlers. My exchange this evening with one woman in particular, outside Jack in the Box, triggered a realization.

Like many industries, ours included, she’d obviously met many, many customers in her day -- and she acted like it. What struck me the most was the swiftness of our exchange. For all my years in both New York and San Francisco, and the many thousands of similar exchanges I have had, she impressed me. It was perhaps all of two seconds long, and ovewhelmingly efficient.

She got no money from me.

To better understand the "marketing" at work in the panhandling biz, I tried to put myself inside her head a bit -- and beyond that, I also tried to surmise and factor in the effects of her long experience.

• How did the technique of panhandling that I'd observed develop?
• What conclusions about her Customer had this marketer come to, for all her years in the field?
• Were they sound choices?
• What could any of it tell me about larger trends in the "industry"?

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