Target

Question 1

According to this article, most shoppers do not shop for all their goods at one place. Instead, they have specific retailers who produce the goods they need. In other words, a retailer will only visit a certain retailer to buy a certain product they associate with that retailer. Target however sells all sorts of things. They were attempting to identify ways they could use to convince their customers that Target is the only retailer they need for all their goods.

Question 2

Studies showed that around the time when women were about to give birth, they were more susceptible to changing their habits. This was as a result of the exhaustion that comes with pregnancy and childbearing. For this reason, Target needed a way to net these customers before they gave birth so that they would influence their change in behaviors.

In their studies, Target realized that before the start of the second trimester of their pregnancy, women often change their shopping needs. First, they realized that shoppers often changed to more unscented lotions when they were pregnant. They also realized that pregnant women often shopped for supplements around their twentieth week. Shoppers who were pregnant were also noted to buy larger amounts unscented soaps and cotton balls.

When this information was combined, it helped to device a method that helped to identify pregnant women using their shopping habits and even predict their due date.

Studies have shown that often, habits have particular cues. These cues often happen before a habit and are usually attributed to triggering the habit. If these cues are exploited, it is easy to change the habits themselves. It however takes a lot of study to identify these cues due to the complexity of human life. The cue and the habit are then associated with a reward. The reward is actually what actually prompts the formation of habits.