Rediscovering the buyer
The consumer purchase cycle now has a discover phase
With the advent of digital ecosystem, traditional consumer purchase decisions are being disrupted. Companies need to recognise the underlying change that is taking place and adapt to become the ‘product or brand of choice’ in this new consumer decision making journey.
Let’s for a moment look at traditional consumer purchase decision process in the pre-digital era, which included problem recognition, information search, looking at alternatives, purchase decision, buying and post purchase evaluation. Imagine a high value purchase like a car, most of the comparison of models, design, features, demo videos, prices, consumer feedback is done online. Therefore, consumers’ ‘search intent’ is available to platform agents like Google, Facebook, Amazon and the like. They have now started playing a huge role in ‘influencing’ consumer purchase decision in the evaluation phase. Consumer purchase decisions, now have a discover phase where ‘search and discover’ go together. What was a planned and considered purchase, is now being driven almost like an impulse purchase through these platforms. So, the days of competing for space in aisles and getting into the shopping bags is becoming increasingly tougher. Therefore, many of the steps in the traditional purchase decision process have collapsed due to digital ecosystems and platforms.
The new consumer purchase decision making process has now changed to what we can term as DECIBEL — discover, explore, collate, inquire, buy, experience, loyalty. So, how do companies or brands prepare for these changing consumer purchase decision era?
Companies or marketers or brands need to reimagine and think like how platform agents work and integrate their architectures with these platform agents in the early two stages. So, if one were a travel brand, how can one help consumers discover their proposition and get them to explore what one has to offer. Or if one was a tea or a beauty brand, there is a need to help consumers discover the ‘tea drinking experience’ or ‘getting beautiful experience’ rather than just focussing on the product or the brand. Integrating and building proprietary intent data platforms become critical at this stage. The next step is to think, how can firms help consumers collate more information. Building an information engine that is contextual and personalised is key during this phase. The third step is to be a part of their inquiry process. Imagine brands having virtual personal shopping assistants where consumers can ask questions to their beauty, travel and banking assistants. This is where the power of AI and Machine learning comes. Firms need to know how to integrate technology and rule algorithms in this phase with the purchase process. This is an area that will evolve in the coming years. During the buy and experience phase, the integration with mobile apps and the like becomes critical – as they can serve as an in-purchase and post-purchase experience, where either purchase is made frictionless – both offline and online. Post purchase experience can be managed better using mobile apps through tips, reminders locationbased alerts, behavioural tagging which will influence post-purchase experience and loyalty. The traditional products now need to think more like service brands rather than product brands and vice-versa. To summarise, in a new digitally-enabled world, companies, marketers and brands need to think of an integrated ‘Purchase, engagement and experience architecture’ to handhold consumers across these new purchase decision moments.