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Small Biz Bookshelf

By Melissa A. Fox
Business Librarian,
Grand Rapids Public Library

We have all had the experience of visiting a business and feeling like it was made just for us — it sells our favorite hard-to-find products, the décor is spot on, the menu is full of food we love, the staff is hip. I often wonder, when I visit such a business, how did they know I would love this place and buy these things?

Knowing who your customers are, what they buy, and where they live are essential elements of customer research and a big part of market research. Taking the time to do this research can make the difference in the success of a business. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs start businesses without doing any customer research and end up with businesses that meet their own needs, that provide a service or product that they think will succeed because they would use it. Many of these businesses fail simply because the only type of customer that was considered is the customer that is just like the entrepreneur.

Knowing the demographics and buying habits of the people who live in your city and neighborhood, the kinds of products and services people use and buy, what they do in their spare time and how they spend their expendable income is powerful information and can be used to make your business the type of business customers support. The Small Business Resource Center at Grand Rapids Public Library has great resources to help you find out more about your potential customers.

One of our best resources for customer research is a database called Business Decision. Business Decision is a dynamic database that includes demographic data, consumer market data and market segmentation data and allows you to customize your search by city, zip code, intersection and much more. The market segmentation data in Business Decision is called “Tapestry” and separates U.S. neighborhoods into 65 market segments, each of which is analyzed and sorted by many attributes including income, employment, home value, housing type, education, household composition, age and other key determinants of consumer behavior. The information included in the Tapestry definitions allows businesses to have a very clear picture of who their customers are, which can be applied to key business decisions such as in researching possible locations or evaluating the success of existing locations, choosing merchandise and creating advertising campaigns.

Once your business is up and running and customers are buying up your merchandise, the focus changes from how to find customers to how to keep them. Customer service should be a key focus for every business, as it often leaves a lasting impression with consumers, whether their experience was good or bad. How do you instill a philosophy of customer service in your business that resonates with your customers and your staff? Try one of these books about current trends and practices in customer service, all of which are available at the Grand Rapids Public Library:

Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want by James H. Gilmore is based on the idea that consumers want businesses to be authentic and desire their experiences with businesses to be real. Ultimately the author wants businesses to evaluate how consumers view them and suggests that businesses remain genuine and true to themselves if they want consumer support.

The Cult of the Customer: Create an Amazing Customer Experience that Turns Satisfied Customers into Customer Evangelists by Shep Hyken explains how businesses can design a strategy to build customer loyalty, taking employees and customers through five phases from “uncertainty” to “amazement.” The overall message of the book is that “the happier your customers and employees are, the more successful your company will be.”

Do the Right Thing: How Dedicated Employees Create Loyal Customers and Large Profits by James F. Parker is about how businesses can win by staying true to themselves and doing the right things. The book includes stories and examples of businesses that are doing the right things, those right things include, “putting people first, finding leaders at every level of your organization, hiring for attitude and training for skills, and achieving unprecedented levels of teamwork.”

“I Love You More Than My Dog:” Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad by Jeanne Bliss discusses how businesses can make the type of decisions that lead to extreme customer loyalty, and gain the kind of customers that will not only frequent your business, but who are also your greatest advertisers, raving to everyone they know about your business. The author suggests that the type of decisions that make the most impact are those that impact customer experience and includes examples from companies that have been successful when making these kinds of decisions.

Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World by Jill Griffin discusses techniques to win customer loyalty while addressing the modern consumer who uses the Internet, with its infinite amount of choices, to comparison shop. Techniques include new rules for building strong brand perception, how to build trust, and how to be different in the eyes of your customer.  MSS

For additional information and resources about customer research, customer service and other business research, visit the Small Business Resource Center at the Grand Rapids Public Library or contact the Business Librarian at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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