If you are an entrepreneur and investing your life and energy in building a business, then you should know the top insight from GfK – a German consumer research firm, that may guide your decision making in 2017. This insight, if well understood & executed, is supposed to make your brand a “must-have” as they are drawn from vast research by GfK.
GfK observed that today's world is fragmented, with respect to “short attention span” and “cautious consumer spending”. So, to elevate your brand, you must rightly connect with your target customer and guide them in making their life easier.
Here are top-10 areas where brands may excel with careful effort.
Latest GfK research noted that top #5 priorities of US consumers are home organization, furniture, storage space, overall size and layout, and level of cleanliness. Among them, home organization and furniture are top most priorities that consumers face. This holds true globally, as GfK found out from their research based on 22 countries around the planet.
Gender plays a very important role in the decision making of this priorities. The research found that women prefer to change interior decoration and furnishing while men prefer to change home layout and space. Renovation of the home is also preferred by men globally.
The consumer wants a human touch in case of service rendered remotely. For example, people prefer to talk to a person instead of text/SMS or email. This hold true for financial service industry or any similar industry that are employing more digital/automated service delivery to attain scale. Consumers even reported the likeliness to pay more for human-rendered service instead of digital-only approach.
One of every six video viewer is subscriber of any Netflix-like streaming in the US. As video or imagery is now powerful media of storytelling, content providers need to work with manufacturers to get their apps pre-loaded into smart tvs and TV connected devices.
From hand cream to smart TV, customers now have more options than ever, both online and offline. So, it is critical make customer in-store experience seamless. GfK suggested using latest technology to understand underlying motive of customer buying or not buying.
Almost half of the user of mobile coupon for food shopping said they are more likely to change brands if given a better deal. This means mobile coupons can play a critical role to entice a user to test drive new brand. This holds true for different types customer from higher-income to lower income group.
In Dhaka, Uber has been setting an example of using the mobile coupon to bring in new customer for its newly launched service. Many new Uber users are posting their experience of first-free uber ride, which is creating buzz and enticing new customer.
Brands need to employ to capture data and use the data to understand consumer's purchasing journey in each step. This will help clear the understanding of decision maker to understand the whole journey, including the twist customer face in the process. GfK suggested integrating survey and other tools within the purchase process for this purpose.
Mobile is eating the world. Smartphone users are using their phones for almost any task that can be done on it. They use it to search for product, browse through online stores and store their preference. Asia and Latin American consumers are adopting mobile as their primary shopping increasingly. GfK suggested integrating smartphone into the whole sales process, from channel choice to payments, so that customers, both online and in-store, become more loyal than ever.
Binge-watching is a way of watching multiple episodes of any television program, typically by means of DVD or streaming service. This is a growing global phenomenon. GfK reported that 57% of their respondent have done this in 2016, while the number was 51% in 2015. The German firm advised brands to find ways to capitalize this and other such extreme habits in building and reaching customers.
GfK suggested using existing data to understand customer purchasing pattern and detect categories that may gain traction in near future.
Customers most of the time connect with brands personally, at emotional level. Listening to customers at right place and time can reveal deeper feeling that customer have about the brand. To become a must-have brand, GfK suggested that brands must engage in conversation that inspires the customers' deep feeling.
