Retailing

June 2017 Retail Strategies

Ask a Patient, Any Patient, Part Two: Case Study

In my last article, I talked about the phenomenon of individuals in a particular business (in this case, opticianry) relying on statistical analyses, market research, and personal experience opinion to form an opinion about patient wants and needs. It wasn’t as analytical as I make it sound. Instead, I touched on the idea of opticians conducting market research of their own—asking their very own patients about their wants, needs, and desires when choosing a pair of glasses. It’s very easy, after all, to make assumptions about our patients—what they want, need, and why they make the choices they do—but it’s also just as easy to ask them themselves why they make these choices. In the spirit of taking my own advice, I decided to do some research of my own, and talk to a real-life eyeglasses wearer about what makes her tick.

May 2017 Doing Good

Framing a Good Cause

April 2017 Technicians

Ask a Patient, Any Patient, Part One

I was recently talking to a group of fellow opticians when the inevitable gripe session began. It is, after all, impossible to put any two or more people of the same profession together in a room and not end up with them airing their grievances, and opticianry is no different. On this day, in particular, the topic of frustration was patient choices. I’m a Millennial, and the other Opticians were younger Boomers and older Gen-Xers, and they wanted to know what it was with my generation’s fixation on chunky plastic frames that leave the OC height about 10mm from the top of a frame with a 40mm B. There was some good-natured ripping into Millennials and their shopping choices, from the aforementioned chunky frames to my generation’s admitted penchant for online shopping.