Final answer:
A sales associate needs to know how the store's products compare to competitors to effectively market their unique selling points, maintain the store's competitive edge, and uphold the store's reputation, ultimately impacting buyers' decisions, fostering customer loyalty, and ensuring the store's business success.
Step-by-step explanation:
It is important for a sales associate to know how a store's products compare to the competitors in order to effectively address customer queries, market the product's unique qualities, and offer comparisons that show the value of their products, thus fostering customer loyalty and repeat business. Sales associates are on the front lines when it comes to influencing customer perception and their knowledge can manipulate a shopper's emotions as marketers found while studying storefront displays. Moreover, knowing how products compare to competitors is crucial because it helps the store maintain a competitive edge in a market where monopolistic competitors often attempt to enter with offerings that may draw away customers, such as additional services or unique features.
A store's reputation for quality and value plays a vital role in customer decisions, and well-informed sales associates can reinforce this reputation. If a store can demonstrate that it offers more value than a competitor - whether through quality, convenience, sustainability, or other features - it's likelier to retain its customer base. In contrast, a store that fails to communicate its advantages might be perceived as offering inferior products or services, risking the loss of customers to more aggressive or informed competitors.
In a market where equilibrium is reached when sellers and buyers have full information about a product's price and quality, knowledge about competitors enables sales associates to ensure customers are making well-informed decisions, crucial for achieving sales and securing long-term business success.