Category: Uncategorized

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marketing / Uncategorized

Covid -19: Consumer behaviour in times of crisis.

As COVID-19 pushes us further into the digital platforms, our virtual customer experiences take centre stage in shaping our perception of the brands. Along with that, we as customers have increased our expectations of brands more than ever. When the crisis unfolds and levels the playing field for brands, some may earn our loyalty, while others may lose our trust.

New social norms has forced the brands to invest heavily in developing Omnichannel strategies to stay afloat; as a result, we have seen years of change condensed into two or three months, and more people could experience the kind of digital interactions than they have probably ever done before.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that expectations will not just be formed by one or two interactions with your brand. People will bring their experiences with other brands to yours, not necessarily from those product categories. They are going to bring all those expectations to the way they interact with you and evaluate your brand, and this is the very reason why brands are investing heavily to develop digital assets of late. 

 The behaviour might be hard to change, that too in a short period of five or six months as this has been shaped due to years of our experiences with products and services, but COVID 19 had made some notable changes to our behaviour. We have seen people move much more towards digital. Will that percentage stay the way it is when things return to normal? We have seen a little bit of a glimpse into the future, and the needle has shifted and the customers are not going back to pre Covid shopping behaviours .

 One good thing that has happened along with the higher degree of digital adoption is that people have also diversified their channels from a social perspective. Previously dominated by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, now we are seeing people using other platforms such as Telegram and Reddit. A recent global web index report has revealed that Social media users are now spending an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes per day multi networking across an average of 8 social networks and messaging apps. One million people have started using social media for the first time in the last 12 months. This means a tremendous increase in usage over the past couple of months. It will be interesting to see how companies choose to engage with consumers across traditional social platforms and co-create their brand stories with them, as this will be a critical factor for brand preference as we advance.

In response to the shifts in customer behaviours, every brand is doing something differently to ensure top-line revenue.Covid19 led disruptions significantly boosting online sales in India. Several e-commerce sales and contribution to overall business have doubled. Consumers continue to buy online rather than venturing into the store for fear of catching the infection. This has led to the rise of Omnichannel. In the coming years, the market will gradually gravitate towards omnichannel players.

Even consumer electronics brands have seen e-commerce contribution to overall sales doubled to 8-10% from the pre-Covid average and could go up further. I would say this is an unprecedented shift in consumer behaviour, as we never thought people would prefer e-commerce stores over brick and mortar for high involvement products like consumer durables; this shift was forcefully happened due to the fear of pandemic. Online –offline and offline-online is going to be the way of life. As we see today, most of the retailers have already adapted to this.

Chatbots and the immediate callbacks with solutions are now the minimum expectation of a customer while choosing a product /service, regardless of the size of the brand and this has forced the brands to invest heavily in artificial intelligence and data analytics to predict consumer behaviour.

However, the big challenge the brands are going to face now would be to make sense of the data and then relate them to realities on the ground and how to get personal without having a physical interface.

  The onus is on the brand managers to ensure seamless conversation with each    prospect, from one touchpoint to another that comes your way and ensure a personalised experience.

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marketing / Uncategorized

Omnichannel strategy in the age of social distancing.

Is the future of retail online? It may be, but there are a number of advantages to brick- and –mortar retail that have yet to be duplicated in the digital space, and many reasons why people still prefer to do their shopping in person, having said that, the distinctions between the way that merchandise is ordered and fulfilled is vanishing quickly in the age of social distancing; customers will demand a seamless experience from retailers, regardless of how they buy products or take delivery. The distinction that we talk about today between stores, apps, pickup, and delivery will blur into the background at a faster pace for customers, they will never mind whether they picked up the item at a store, purchased it online, or ordered it via a mobile phone. Buyers will demand easy access to inventory, assurance that the chosen item is in stock, and prompt delivery or pick up at the store – sometimes as quickly as the same day, which will be the new normal in retail, and here comes the relevance of Omni-channel retail.

Omnichannel retailing is a strategy of having a presence across all touchpoints, which basically means going beyond bricks-and-mortar locations to mobile-browsing, online marketplaces, social media, and every online channel where the customers can browse. An omnichannel retailing links together all channels, combining the showroom and the website to create a single, unified experience, which means a wrong approach can lead to customer dissatisfaction. For example, there should be consistency in the products showing in all its digital touchpoints and these products must always be updated for their availability, if a product shown online has the wrong cost price compared to offline channel or is mentioned available on the site despite being out of stock, customers will be left disappointed with the shopping experience.

The most pivotal elements of omnichannel service are knowing and understanding the customer completely and consistently executing across all points of brand interaction. Together, these elements ensure the kind of personalised brand experience that creates competitive differentiation for your customer and operational efficiency for you. To fully know and understand your customer, you must be able to view her brand experience holistically to establish the kind of brand relationship that creates trust, strengthens loyalty, and promotes brand advocacy. 

As we know the modern customer journey is more fluid and flexible than ever before, the shoppers still expect a single, seamless shopping experience. A shopper may choose to interact with your brand across multiple digital channels, bouncing between social, web, mobile, and more before completing their purchase. In order to provide a unified experience brand’s digital platforms must ensure a faultless movement in each phase of the customer journey –anywhere, anytime, on any device.             

The simplicity and enhanced customer experience offered by omnichannel have a number of important payoffs. In particular, they lead to a closer relationship between customers and brand, lower price sensitivities, increase margins and customer loyalty, and overall longer-term value from customers ( CLV). Mobile and social have enabled customers to not only quickly switch between channels, but actually use channels simultaneously. For example, checking out product reviews on their mobile phone while evaluating a product on a physical retail store shelf. In essence, omnichannel marketing recognizes that customers engage with companies or brands in many different ways—across multiple platforms—and grasps the inherent challenge this creates in terms of ensuring consistent experiences

What is Omnichannel Retailing? - [2020 Definition and Examples]

The social distancing and avoidance of public gatherings have evidently given a new direction to retailing, digital and remote buying is going to be the order of the day. Brands are looking at actively promoting an omnichannel approach, if customers don’t want to pay for shipping or wait for products, they want the ability to buy online and pick-up from the nearby brand store quickly. Most customers want to pick-up their product the same day, or many times within an hour(s). This means you need to have product in-stock and the ability to quickly allocate and access it. Consumers will start to emerge from their homes to enjoy the physical shopping experience once the epidemic situation improves, however, many of the online habits developed over this period will remain and flow naturally into consumers expecting a good omnichannel shopping experience.

The epidemic will force retailers to reach new heights in channel integration. They should diagnose their omnichannel capabilities and develop roadmaps for new situations—the first step for businesses seeking to achieve omnichannel transformation and those who have actively invested in the digital strategies will be reaping the benefits.

 Create an engaging personalised brand experience would be the mantra for the success in the future, across the segments, and how robust is your GTM strategy to address this new normal is the question to be answered.