Studying Your Audience

by Danny Summers

As we have wrapped up spring in most regions the last few weeks, you now have the majority of your Spring 2024 Customer Data available to study. We can see in Week 22 of the WDR, year-to-date Average Sale remains virtually flat with this same week last year. But Transaction Counts year-to-date are down about -5%.

These compare to Average Sale being flat and Transaction Counts being +2.6% as of this week last year. And then end-of-year for 2023 being virtually even with Average Sale & Transaction Counts resulting in near-even sales against 2022.

So, you have seen fewer customers, or maybe some of your customers just didn't visit your Center as often as last year resulting in fewer transactions. In either case, it's worth taking time to drill down into "what the numbers are saying."

Watching each week's numbers come in this spring, weather seemed to play a larger-than-usual part in affecting key week's sales. I heard it from Group Owners and Managers often. We just could not string together several great weather weeks in most regions.

Covered shopping versus weather... Covered shopping is a subject The Group has promoted in recent years and it certainly provides a "weather-proof" option for non-ideal days, but let's face it, the typical customer needs good weather to install the plants and products you sell.

For years, we all could blame the weather, but never had numbers to back it up. Of course, beginning with the new WDR last year that all changed and we now have a weather rating. We have the numbers!

I asked Tim Quebedeaux, our resident "Numbers Guru", to dig into our data and compare our total weather ratings and our total sales week by week through Week 22, comparing 2023 to 2024. Here are the results. (Note: both weather and sales reporting in these charts are data from our 100% reporting Centers only for both years.)

First is the weather rating. In both of these charts, this year is the line and last year is the bar each week. Also, the date shown is the first day of the week – which is always Monday. For quick reference on details below, Week 18 began April 29, Week 19 - May 06, Week 20 - May 13, and Week 21 - May 20.

First, let's keep in mind that this is a nation-wide composite. If we were to drill down by region we could see much more details and which regions impacted the total.

A quick observation... this year we see some strong (near ideal) weather early in February and March but then in April and May, when we need some 7's, we see mainly 5's and 6's and only two 7's and they were the last couple weeks of May. Week 19, which begins with May 6th, was 5.9 this year, versus 7.1 last year.

Now, let's look at the sales chart below to study against the weather chart above. Can we see the effects weather had on sales? Week 19 on the sales chart shows a dramatic drop from the bar for the same week in 2023.

Weeks 18, 19, 20 and 21 are so critical for the total spring season. And in these weeks, weather came in as 5.2, 5.9, 6.2 and 7.1. Only one week reached into the 7's. These are such big weeks, any early gains in February-March weeks could not make up the difference.

And another area in Studying Your Audience is how it may be shifting or changing age groups. Sid has recently discussed the number of Baby Boomers who are downsizing and how quickly (or not) younger segments of your audience are stepping up and buying more.

Do you have any way of tracking the age ranges of your audience? If you and your team feel you are seeing a faster transition between age groups, this is certainly an area to devote more time to study. Changes in age groups require different messaging strategies and certainly require different messages and methods to connect with them as well.
I often quote Steve Jobs, Co-Founder of Apple Computer, in the Quote of the Week but one of his quotes fits very well here...

While this blog message was focused on Studying Your Audience, it ties right into what you will see in John Kennedy's new Summer Series that kicks off today below... Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience!

It's worth the effort. Studying Your Audience will help you Get Closer than Ever and help you Deliver Exceptional Customer Experience!