Instead, customers are getting more and more demanding all the time. The competition is constantly evolving. And as a result, fortune does not smile on more-of-the-same products that are made in vast quantities and are everywhere available lined up on shelf after shelf in numbingly identical displays. If you can get it anywhere, anytime, why buy it here and now?
  
Realizing this, manufacturers and retailers alike have to go out of their way to add consumer value. The reception something gets is almost directly proportional to the thought that went into it. Of course you need to be in tune with the community. But that alone is not enough. You need to be in tune with the people who shop at this or that particular store. You need to realize that, even at the same store, the people who shop there are different -- even if they are the same people -- depending upon what day of the week or month it is and what time of the day it is.
  
And this is not just products. There are some shops that offer their customers loan umbrellas if they get caught in the rain. It may be a little thing, but it makes an impression. It tells people the retailer cares. And then there are other shops that do not have that discretionary flexibility and are not allowed to care. Do I have to tell you where people are going to shop?

  
Many management gurus are talking about innovation, but the best definition I have heard is that innovation is what happens when you are able to transform yourself to satisfy your most demanding customers.
  

Ogata Kazuyuki
Office 2020