Blog 20: Exit Interview

1. What is your essential question and answers?  What is your best answer and why?

My Essential Question is What is the best way to profit as an independent music store?

My answers are

1) One of the ways an independent music store can profit is to connect to the people (employees, customers, and community) of their business.

2) Another way to profit as an independent music store is to be knowledgeable in your business.

3) Another way an independent music store can profit is to be specialized and unique.

2. What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

Connection with the people:

A combination of my experience in my mentorship, my interviews, and my research led me to see the importance of a store's connection with its people. After all, retail is a people business, and this is a sentiment I've echoed very frequently because it's true. It's only because of people (employees) that our business functions. It's only because of people (customers) that our business profits. It's only because of people (community) that our business expands.

My mentorship and my interviews emphasized the importance of a good relationship between all three types of people. An employee I often work with and have interviewed twice often said to me the importance of paying your employees on time and training them well, the latter key to the development of the employees as a worker. He also stressed the importance of treating your customers well to increase their chances of returning.

My research articles similar say the same thing, but with addition of tangible data to support their claims. Frank Helsing and et al.'s journal piece, "An Intersector Analysis of the Relevance of Service in Building a Strong Retail Brand.", showed the positive effects service has on the identity of the brand, and therefore the loyalty of the customers. Articles from magazines geared towards music retail employees also gave advice that emphasized the importance of personal touch with customers; some even claim that it is our main strength against large music chain stores.

Knowledgeable in business:

This answer was created in a similar way of my first answer. My experiences and my research all led to this answer as well.

The employee and my mentor, owner of the music store Gene Iacono, had briefly touched on the importance of knowing what you're talking about in my interviews with them. Even more so enlightening was my experience in my mentorship: one day, a customer had came in asking for a guitar jack parts. The employee I was with then had no clue what to do, so we decided to redirect the customer to another store that specialized on guitars. When we later talked to the owner, we found out that there is a proper procedure for customers who came in for guitar parts or other things that we currently do not have in our stock: consult our catalogs. As it turns out, we have catalogs and connections to music equipment suppliers, and we could have ordered a guitar jack or anything else from these catalogs for the customer. That very experience was important in the shaping of this answer.

My research articles also contributed to the creation of this answer. Joanne Phillips Melancon's research article, "Synergistic Effects of Operant Knowledge Resources." showed the importance and the positive effects of knowledge of customers, firm practices, and industry on the firm's capability of meeting their customers' needs. Some articles also showed the importance of proper training of employees for, in a similar conclusion to Melancon's, their capability to meet their customers' needs.

Unique and individuality:

This was key for the independent music store. All through my research, I often see the common problem of independent music store needing to be able to compete evenly with larger chain music stores. While some articles of magazines for music retailers differentiate the whole entity of independent music stores from large chain music stores with their ability to better accommodate customers and their better capability for customer service, some independent store owners of my research also put forward the importance of an individual, unique identity to the attractiveness of their store. Shane Kinney, an owner of a specialized store for drums, said in his article, "Tips for Interior Retail Display." the necessity of a store reflecting the values and personality of its owner; it creates a personalized feeling to the single store.

Similarly, the same themes appeared in the talks I would have in my mentorship. An employee also talked about the importance of being unique and, as he would put it in his own words, "cool."

This was supported by research articles as well. In Frank Haelsig and et. al.'s article "An Intersector Analysis of the Relevance of Service in Building a Strong Retail Brand", the researchers put "differentiation" as one of their key factors in building a strong retail brand.

3. What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

In the first half of my research, I would always come across these music retail articles written by music retailers themselves that would put forward their beliefs (such as in personal touch, individualism, and expertise). But I would always had an issue with their lack of factual basis behind these theories and beliefs; they are, after all, very anecdotal, and perhaps even biased.

I managed to resolve this issue by searching into retail research journals, and managing to find articles that actually provided scientific and factual evidence and support behind the music retailers' hypotheses. Not only that, it confirmed the validity of the music retailers' claims and expertise; it really made the point that these retailers very much knew what they were talking about.

4. What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

Two most significant sources I used to answer my essential question (so far anyway) is my mentorship and Frank Haelsig and et. al.'s article "An Intersector Analysis of the Relevance of Service in Building a Strong Retail Brand". I chose my mentorship because while I didn't physically do much, I gained a lot of information and insight from the discussions we held about retail and business and the little experiences I had. On the other hand, I chose Haelsig's article because it is my go-to article in a tangible basis to the argument that employee and firm action creates actual effects on their sales.