Nordstrom Uses Web to Locate Items and Increase Sales – NYTimes.com

I love Nordstrom and its customer focused philosophy. And it shows that by focusing on what the customer actually wants, not what you THINK they want is a win/win situation.

Wal-Mart hoped that deeper cuts in its standard rollbacks would be a draw, but then said the prices went too low. At Saks, perhaps customers would go for designer labels if the lines offered less-expensive items. And for Macy’s, how about inexpensive clothes by Madonna?

The secret, at least for Nordstrom, has not involved a piercing insight into a customer’s mind. Rather, it has changed the way that it handles, of all things, inventory. And that has brought the department store more success in improving sales than at most of its competitors, whose recent reports signaled that their consumers were still cautious.