Who's your customer?

In today’s fast-paced marketplace, you don’t get to be just a garden center operator – you also need to be a knowledgeable, aggressive, competitive salesperson. Your customer is surrounded by media discussing what’s trendy and hot. If you can’t sell her on what you’re marketing, someone else is waiting to take her money.

So, what do you do? A great starting point for any marketing project, as simple as it sounds, is getting to know the market. Ball Horticultural Co. collected data just over a year ago about gardening consumers through survey groups, Internet surveys and store observations. Ball looked at the basic gardener in various incarnations—active, declining, lapsing (stop and start)—and non-gardening consumers in various age ranges.

The company found that with the exception of the 55-plus years-old age group, the majority were active gardeners. In the 55-plus age group the majority of people were still gardening actively but the lapsing category had substantially increased, probably due to physical limitations.

Ball Horticultural looked at the same age groups and asked people to classify themselves as a master gardener, gardening enthusiast, casual gardener or unenthusiastic gardener. Surveys found that gardening enthusiasm increases with age. Our industry is selling primarily to the enthusiastic and casual gardeners.

Consumers were asked if the time they spend gardening has increased or decreased and why this change has occurred. More than 70 percent said their time gardening has increased. This is a very positive sign. Those people who indicated the time they spent gardening has decreased included mostly lapsed and non-gardeners.

Based on the data collected, the average customer is an active gardener who is casual to enthusiastic about gardening. This customer is age 35 to 55 years old and has a limited amount of time to garden. She is looking for convenience and healthy plants that will last through the season. Retailers and growers alike need to be very conscious of product quality and the shopping environment. Seasonal changes stimulate gardening customer sales, and growers and retailers should to be ready to meet these changes. Look, listen and follow the trends your customers are reacting to.
 

Customers who are buying
Consumers were asked why they chose certain outlets for purchasing plants. Time efficiencies/other product availability was the No. 1 reason consumers selected a retailer. The next most important reasons were healthy flowers and customer service.

Potential customers
The lapsed and non-gardener groups are still potential customers. When people in these two groups were asked why they garden less or not at all, the main reasons were not enough time, physical limitations and lack of garden space. Gift promotions, special events and seasonal offerings are good ways to get these groups into garden centers.

Jerry Gorchels is technical product representative, Ball Horticultural Co., (630) 588-3179; jgorchels@ballhort.com.