Razorfish has an excellent market commentary report focusing on the consumer experience and how technology affects today’s consumer experience.
The big take-out?…”Brands will need to create content that engages and “reaches” consumers across channels, provide valuable services over mere advertising and master an increasingly complicated and expansive content distribution model. And, of course, they will need to rethink the way they create relationships (or conversations) with consumers before it’s too late.”
I’ll list some pretty compelling stats that they use to back this up:
• 40% of survey respondents said they have made a purchase based on advertising they saw on a social media site. And the vast majority welcome advertising in social media experiences—76% of all consumers think a wide range brands like Nike, Virgin and Bank of America should advertise in social media.
• The majority of survey respondents (75%) indicate they spend at least one hour a week on these properties, with a large number (19%) spending more than seven hours a week on social networking sites.
• The large majority of consumers (61%) rely on user reviews for product information and research, with a much smaller group (15%) preferring editorial reviews.
• According to our survey, the same number of consumers (65%) indicate loyalty programs that offer “points,” discount incentives or discounted shipping for multiple purchases (e.g. Amazon’s Prime) highly influence purchase decisions. Loyalty services—such as Best Buy’s Rewards Zone, Amazon Prime, and others—are key if retailers are to thrive in an increasingly competitive digital environment.
• While the vast majority of connected consumers have standard mobile handsets, 26% have smartphones
• Today’s connected consumers are equally distributed across all age ranges, with a slight skew to older segments. No longer are we seeing Internet technology adoption rates limited to only certain segments. Our study found widespread acceptance of these new service offering and finds older consumers much more likely to spend money online.
• All signs point to the continuing disintegration of “one-stop” digital destinations, at least as far as consumers are concerned. We’ve found that they don’t want a one-size-fits-all solution for their needs. Consumers prefer using multiple destinations, and then aggregating media and services, via simple tools like RSS, into a highly personalized view of their digital world.
• We expect to see greater reliance on social media to influence purchasing in the near future and not just from friends, but also from brands. This might even come full circle, shortly, where brands will regain some modicum of control and credibility if they can figure out how to play meaningfully in this space moving forward.
Some really interesting stuff. We here at perkler have backed our product based on the same views which is refreshing…we aren’t the only ones! What is crazy from our experience is the average Joe Blow marketer for ABC Brand who not only thinks he is doing a good job embracing digital media, but when asked on his/her strategy replies with confidence that his “team” is all over email, and are currently looking into SMS!
Wake up and smell the rewards flavoured coffee! Engage with users on their current level and as Jus noted in the previous post…return on customer loyalty will be exponential.
Razorfish’s excellent blog can be found here http://www.digitaldesignblog.com/. highly recommended reading, as is their report.
Dan
