This article consists of two parts:
Part 1 – discussed the trends in sales and communication channels leading to channel abundance.
Part 2 – covers how this channel abundance will impact the future, much more scattered, consumer landscape, and the implications for consumer understanding and consumer insights managers.
In the Part 1 we described the following trends leading to channel abundance:
- Individualized data driven sales and marketing will intensify
- Purchase decision will be much more driven via social media and digital assistants
- IoTs (Internet of Things) and wearables will intensify
What does the above mean? How will this have an impact on the current landscape for the consumer? Where consumers buy their products, how can you reach consumers via media and the different means to influence the final purchase decision. Below we describe the future landscape which will be much more scattered!
- Buying channels
Consumers will continue to buy in retail (brick and mortar) shops. Sales via online platforms as well direct will increase. At the same time some products will also be used and affected by a sharing economy. This means that buying channels are getting much more scattered, granular and diffused. - Media landscape
Linear TV will continue to exist but will lose its importance. The trend to watch my favourite program or movie now will intensify. This means that VOD/on-line video will get a higher weight as well as time shifted watching. TV watching from other devices (and especially mobile) will intensify as well. This combined with the individual driven digital advertising will give a rather scattered and granular picture. - Purchase decisions
Consumers will be able to be influenced at more moments and via more means. Social media influencing will increase but also will digital/bot assistants. Virtual shops, that simulate a real shopping experience, will impact purchase decisions. This combined with digital media and other touchpoints which contribute to how final decisions are made. The weight of these purchase decision factors as well as moments give a rather scattered picture as well.
The consumer will have more choice, and more possibilities to buy products/services or use them temporarily at the instant moment. The consumer will have more possibilities to select and watch media on their preferred device at their preferred moment. This will mean consumers will have more possibilities to be advised and influenced on final purchase decision.
Companies will need to know how to operate in this changing consumer environment. Some FMCG companies could suffice until recently, only a few years ago, with retail audit tracking and GRP’s overviews to have a good overall landscape understanding. This is absolutely not enough in the future situation.
What does this mean for consumer understanding?
- Companies will need the full (scattered) picture to feed their strategy, and want to know:
- The importance, growth of the diverse buying channels as well as their performance, development and positions within these channels
- The cross-media landscape to evaluate the multi-channel reach and frequency of their media efforts
- The order and importance of purchase decision factors
- Companies will need to have the individual picture to feed daily individual data driven sales and marketing operations and want to know what to offer (product, pricing, packaging) to whom, which channel, to reach them on, with which touchpoints, and how to influence them with which message
The Consumer Insight Manager will hold this understanding for many companies. The Consumer Insight Manager needs to find their way between a macro overview (painting the full picture) and much more micro support (feed the sales and marketing on their daily operations).
What does this mean for the Consumer Insight manager?
- To have a good understanding of the different information systems (DMP’s, CDP’s) as well of big data sources. And to steer the measurement by agencies to get the complete picture.
- To feed the daily operations to be knowledgeable of how it works and what’s needed to fully understand consumers. Data sources will need to be fully exploited to understand consumer behaviour and ROI (what is working better). This implies an even stronger understanding of data science / machine learning.
- Such data sources won’t provide Consumer Insights Managers ‘the why’ regarding consumer motivations. This understanding should be built upon what the company already knows. This understanding consists also of watching the impact of all marketing efforts in the mind of the consumer. This should give input to these marketing efforts (adapt, continue or change) as well a trigger to deep dive. Social media can be one of the sources.
