It’s almost impossible to look at
your own store through your customers’ eyes. You’ve plotted each square inch of
the place, and no matter how hard you try, you see it through biased eyes.
Consider our consumer panelist
your designated mystery shoppers. They answered several probing questions about
what it’s like to shop in their neighborhood independent garden centers. Their
answers are sometimes unexpected, and fully compelling.
Meet this month’s panelists:
Kiersten DeBrower, 31, is an
executive assistant and lives in Evanston, Ill., in a house with a 24-bush rose
garden, a 44-square-foot vegetable garden and a couple of flower beds. She moved
in two years ago and discovered she loves gardening.
Erik Moore, 43, a software
quality engineer, lives in a tiny single-family home in Arlington, Mass., with a
challenging hillside lot. He recently added about 1,000 spring bulbs. He began
gardening when he moved into the house four years ago.
Tony DiConza, 38, lives in a
suburb of Salt Lake City called Herriman. He is married, has three children, and
is the IT manager of Parvus Corp. He is also the proud owner of his first home,
purchased new two years ago, and has only recently started landscaping its
quarter-acre lot.
Click on a page below to download each article's PDF file.
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