For any market to be reached, a company needs to figure out how to make tangible products and intangible services more tangible for the customer. The more tangible a product or service is to the customer, the more a customer is likely to make a purchase.
One example: a customer walks in to IKEA to see what kinds of organizational products exist. IKEA is designed to reach customers who care about three things: efficient organization, low prices, and the environment. In order to reach these people who value these things, IKEA has designed its entire store to show its products. There are displays throughout the entire store that invite the customer to see what products would look like in his home. Some of the displays are set up as tiny studio apartments, designed to show all IKEA products that improve space quality in the home. IKEA has a restaurant at the top floor. Every single item used in the restaurant is a product sold in the store: every item from the light fixtures, to the chairs, to the plates the food is served on. IKEA makes its products tangible by giving customers the chance to see how products work and could potentially benefit the customer.
One example of a service is the insurance office I work for. I meet with customers and talk to them about the quality of State Farm insurance. My coworkers and I sell policies that protect customers in future events. The challenge we have is helping customers assess their needs with the resources they have. We don't want to sell customers more insurance coverage then they need, but we need to make sure they are fully covered in the event of a claim. When we get done writing a policy, we hand customers a piece of paper that explains their coverages and outlines their premium plans. Something we encounter everyday is how do we show customers that we represent quality service and that we are trustworthy when we are talking about protecting them in future events? That's a huge part of my role in my office is thinking about the customers we serve and how to give customers quality in the present. Besides being efficient with payments and friendly on the phone, I find ways to represent quality with our marketing materials. Part of our budget allows for us to purchase products that we can give away to people who walk into our office. When clients come in with their kids, sometimes I'll give a kid a State Farm teddy bear. We give out calendars with my agent's name on them to our clients. Sometimes I'll order a bunch of potted plants and take them to customers who are in the hospital after a horrible accident or to their houses after a family member has passed away. Giving out free items to customers doesn't "make" a business, but it is a kind gesture that shows you care. It shows the quality of your care from a personal and a business standpoint.
Why am I so intrigued by this concept of tangibility? I think some of us are really, really good at seeing intangible things and figuring out what to do with them. Like numbers people. Like my dad, he is so good at sitting down with a whole bunch of expenses and numbers and creating budgets and plans for a business. I am the opposite. If I sit down and look at an accounting assignment, all I see is a bunch of numbers. They mean nothing to me. It's always been that way for me. I liked math in elementary school because my teachers would take physical things to describe math problems. My third grade teacher taught us math with using candy. We would act out the problems using the pieces. It made it tangible for me to understand the purpose of the assignment.
I think because I like tangible things, I have struggled often with the presence of God. Last year I really struggled with this concept. It was a day when I was down about something and I was praying to God. When I was in prayer, I asked Him why I couldn't just be hugged by Him. I know thats kind of a weird thing to ask. Whenever I pictured God, I always pictured this huge guy just sitting on this golden throne, unapproachable. In my mind, I knew God was loving but I didn't feel that closeness. I knew I couldn't just run up and hug God and for some reason that was really hard for me. As I was wrestling with this, I really started asking God for faith.
As I was asking for this faith, I was trying to listen to people who I knew believe in God. I remember sitting in chapel almost every tuesday and thursday of my sophomore year hearing people's testimonies. In almost every testimony, I heard the speaker say something along the lines of "God transformed me and I realized it wasn't about religion but it is about a relationship with Him. He started changing so much in my life for good and now I am living every day for Him. Let's pray". That's how just about all of the sermons would conclude and I was always left unsatisfied. I wanted to know more. What did this relationship with God look like on a day-to-day basis? What about the bad days? How does a redeemed person trust and relate with this perfect God every single day, even when sinful and bad things still come up? I started getting really bitter last year because I wondered why, even though I've always had so much faith and reverence for God, why I didn't feel physically close to Him.
As I've written about in my blog before, God really used this past summer in Colorado in my life. He gave me this gift of tangibility. I loved driving twenty minutes in the mountains on my way to work because I could see the creative and magnificent God reflected in the natural world around me. I loved hiking with my friend Tana on the weekends because we could just get so lost in this world. It really hit me the day I was hiking the fourteener (mountains in colorado that are taller than 14000 feet) Quandary. It hit me that I WAS relating with God. All of the time I was asking God questions in the car on the way to work and expressing my frustrations and my lack of understanding, all of the time I spend hiking and thinking about all of the things I was seeing, and all of the people God used in my life this summer who gave me hugs and talked to me about God's love for me when I didn't even believe He could love someone like me. God WAS relating to me. God WAS tangibly reaching down to me. He WAS listening to me and giving me this faith and deep desire to know Him. Through the things He made: I saw His beauty in the mountains, I saw His character in my good friend Tana and in the members of the family I lived with this summer.
It also hit me one day when I was on my lunch break. I was eating lunch in one of my favorite places: a mountainy park with all this beautiful red rock. There was this spot that I liked to hike to that had this perfect rock to sit on and dangle me feet over. I was talking on the phone to my best friend Joy who lives in Chicago, way too far away! I've known Joy since I was four years old. We've seen each other grow and transform in so many incredible ways through the years. This summer was really hard being so far away from her when we both had a lot going on. There were many times when we were talking that I just wanted to give her a hug and I couldn't, but I knew she was there. And my gratitude for my friendship with her just grew immensely this summer. God was giving me this friendship that I had known since just about when I can start remembering. God shows his character through Joy Dean because He is consistent and her friendship has been consistent in my life.
So I've had this realization that God has created people and things to represent Himself. We are called to love one another and treasure one another because we represent God's love to each other. Of course we have to be careful about depending on these things. If I get disappointed in people, I have to be careful not to get disappointed in God too, and man I struggle with that because I am so focused on tangible life.
But that's kind of when the concept of relationship with people makes sense to me. That's how it makes sense to me that God blesses me with roommates and friendships and perhaps a certain guy ;) ...Relationships are blessings that God gives us to bring us all to Him. We have to ask for the faith to see Him even in disappointment and to see Him through His creation. We have to choose to worship the Creator for these blessings, not His created things.
When we ask for that faith and spend time with the people we are thankful for and ask Him to show Himself to the people we encounter, we are relating with Him. God wants our hearts. He created our hearts and wants us to express the things we love to Him.
In the past year, I have developed this deep desire to have stronger faith even when I can't point to things and say that's why I want to believe more. I just do. And the only explanation I have to explain that desire is that I was created for it.
I'll leave with this last thought that comes from a story in Matthew. It's a story of darkness and a father with a heavy heart for his son. A father who loved his son in the midst of such a desperate and heavy situation and a father whose faith still led him to ask his hearts deepest desire. It's a story about a God who uses his people to heal and give, but about a people who have little faith and a lot of doubt. It's a story about a God who takes compassion and gave this man faith and healing in the situation, even though there was sin and unbelief present. It's a story that shows us how to ask for healing, but even more how to embrace faith and trust the Lord in every single thing we do in faith:
When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”
“You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.
Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 17:14-21
