Retail Speaker James Dion

James Dion (Jim), founder and president of Chicago-based Dionco Inc., is an internationally known Retail Speaker & Trainer, Retail Consultant, and the Author of the best-sellers Retail Selling Ain’t Brain Surgery, It’s Twice As Hard, Start and Run a Retail Business and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting and Running a Retail Store. Jim consults, trains and speaks on consumer trends, retail technology, selling and service, retail merchandising and operations, marketing and leadership. He counts Ritz-Carlton, Harley-Davidson, Microsoft, Intel, Dell and many other Fortune 500 companies amongst his best clients and fans.

Profile Summary:

With a BS, MS degree in Psychology from Chicago State University and a Ph.D. (abd) in Industrial Psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology combined with over 30 years of progressive retail experience working at Sears, Levi Strauss and Gilmore Department Stores, Jim is one of the most sought after Retail Consultants and Retail Speakers in the US and internationally.

As a Retail Consultant, he has helped hundreds of retailers large and small successfully reposition their retail business, including Ritz-Carlton, Harley-Davidson, Hummer, Poster Plus, The Hat Shack, and Potomac ABC to name a few.

A PC expert and a Microsoft Developer, Jim has conducted major retail system and POS installs at retailers nationwide. He also studies and evaluates new retail POS, EDI, merchandising systems and relationship marketing software. He has been a judge for the Microsoft© Retail Developer Awards as well as for CIO Magazine Top 100.

As a Retail Speaker, Jim has delivered hundreds of keynote speeches, seminars and workshops for some of the largest companies in the US and internationally. Companies like Microsoft, Maytag, Vestel (Turkey), IBM, Honey-Baked Ham, Williams-Sonoma, ASICS, JDA, Swarovski, Macy’s and others have all benefited from Jim's insights on retail selling, merchandising, technology, and consumer trends. Jim is also a frequent Retail Speaker for leading associations, including the National Retail Federation, the Association of Golf Merchandisers, Narta (Australia), the National Shoe Retailers Association, the National Sporting Goods Association and many others. He is a faculty member in the MBA program at Harley-Davidson University and works with Harley-Davidson dealers around the world.

A writer for hundreds of national and international trade magazines and a regular contributor at www.allexperts.com, Jim is consistently ranked at the top for his insights and practical advice. He has also appeared on NBC, Fox News, First Business and CNN US and Turkey.

City: Chicago
State: Illinois
Book: “Retail Selling Ain’t Brain Surgery, It’s Twice As Hard”, “Start and Run a Retail Business” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting and Running a Retail Store”
Years Speaking Professionally: 28
Largest Audience: 3,000
Audience Targets: Retailers, Consumer product producers
Keynote Length: 60 minutes
Keynote Title: What Every Retailer Can Learn From Apple
Workshop Length: 90 to 180 minutes
Workshops Described: The Psychology Of Price, It may appear that price is all customers are focused on today and, the lower the better. Retailers are reacting by slashing prices without realizing that this can be a race to the bottom which only a few stores may be able to return from. Yet, if you look at the psychological reasons behind our obsession with low price, there are some interesting twists in our thinking that can make things appear to be a lot better than they are. Paying full price, for example, may be unthinkable, yet, what exactly is full price today? Is it the real cost of a product or is it more of a “reference price” that outlets and off price stores use to justify a discount and make it look like the deal is too good to pass up? An inflated price, even though the consumer knows it is inflated, makes a product more desirable to them and makes the discounted price seem low by comparison. Also, it is true that consumers think that they know how much things should cost while in fact, they rarely do. As well, as Donald Lichtenstein, Professor of Marketing, at the University of Colorado pointed out, customers often believe that if something is not true, the store is not allowed to lie to them. These are just a few of what we would call “missing pieces” in the consumer’s psychological perception of price which, if we fully understand, can help us develop a price strategy that can help us cater to their apparent lust for low prices while still maintain a respectable profit margin and customer loyalty. It can be done!
Webinar Topics: Please visit website (link below) for more information
Webinar Lengths: 45 minutes
Travel: Anywhere in the World
Speaker Website: Website Link