FUTURECAST IN CONSUMER (MIS) BEHAVIOUR

Professor Luiz MoutinhoFoundation Chair of Marketing

University of Glasgow Business SchoolSCOTLAND

New Marketsphere – a techno-driven, borderless world with fragmenting media and diverse customers resistant to traditional push marketing.

PARADIGM SHIFTS

•Attention economy

•Experience economy

•Conversation economy•(contextual conversations)

•Application economy

•Emotion economy

•A shift from “telling and selling”

•Marketing Evolves from Selling to Citizenship

Share- and- compare economy

Secret Economy (underground world of P2P search – Metrics Vacuum)

AGE OF RECOMMENDATION

The social revolution needs to be understood, but what needs to be driven home even more so is that companies who continue to deliver mediocre or bad experiences will find themselves in a downward spiral, fuelled by a digital revolution that has now empowered all of us.

•IN-OUT vs OUT-IN

•A new type of operation is turning the “supply chain” into a “demand value chain”, by reversing the flow of marketing from “company to customer” to “customer to company”!

•The End of Control and the Future of Content!

•Anthropological and Ethnographic Research identify pattern behaviour patterns in consumption

•Consumerologists. Econographics

•“Insight” departments (Lego, Nike, P&G)

TRENDS IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

•REHUMANISATION – HUMANITY STRIKES BACK …

•Intangibles like purpose, fulfilment and quality of life are gaining in importance.

•“It’s All about Me” vs “It’s All about Us” (e.g., volunteerism and “giving back”. Philanthropy replacing the pursuit of physical beauty, material possessions and hedonism).

•THE NEW LENS IS HUMAN!

Cocooning-Hiving

Fantasy adventure

Small indulgences

Egonomics

The Vigilante Consumer

99 Lives

Icon toppling

Generation G

S O S

Possible deconsumption

Home is hot

Down-ageing

Anchoring

Mancipation

Clanning

Evelution – Female Fever – Feminisation of Markets.

NEW SOCIOQUAKE NEW SOCIAL VALUES

Consciousness paradigm

• Solve the customer’s problem completely by insuring that all the goods and

services work, and work together.• Do not waste the customer time.• Provide exactly what the customer wants.• Provide what is wanted exactly where it is

wanted.• Provide what is wanted where it is wanted

exactly when it is wanted.• Continually aggregate solutions to reduce the

customer’s time and hassle.

THE PRINCIPLES OF LEAN CONSUMPTION

A trend towards simplification in lifestyles. After many years of being time crunched and obsessed with acquiring things, a large population segment may be ready to slow down and simplify.

LIVING THE SIMPLE LIFE

• Increasing signs that a shift away from a work-obsessed lifestyle is becoming a significant trend.

• Voluntary simplicity: towards a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich.

• . . . . . Your money or your life !

• The Why Generation

• NO-FRILLS CHIC.

Voluntary Simplicity, Affluenza and Downshifting

Status-craving consumers are hunting down the next wave in über-exclusive goods, services and experiences that are truly out of reach for the masses, now that MASSCLUSIVITY has commoditised all but the most luxurious products on earth.

“ÜBER PREMIUM”

•TRANSUMERS are consumers driven by experiences instead of the ‘fixed’, by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, increasingly living a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions …•To be in fashion, … is to be out of fashion …

TRANSUMERS

•LIFE CACHING trend represents a next step for the Experience Economy concept: how consumers actually can and will capture the avalanche of today’s experiences instead of just undergoing them.

Professor Luiz MoutinhoProfessor Luiz Moutinho

In a consumer society dominated by experiences in the public domain – often branded, designed, themed and curated. INSPERIENCES represent consumers desire to bring top-level, professional grade experiences into their domestic domain.

“INSPERIENCES”

The INSPERIENCE trend is evolving. It will continue to be about consumers wanting to ‘domesticize’ any interesting experience they have in the public space, at times treating every surrounding like a giant catalogue.

“The World as a Catalogue”

So will we soon see Starbucks coffee bars for the home? Will consumers’ bedrooms be decked out completely by Westin Hotels? Will Pathe and Warner Bros take command of the millions of home theatres popping up in residential areas around the world?

Hard on Hard, Soft on SoftParity markets and smaller zones of tolerance.

Organised, in control, empowered. Consumers get more power.

Satisfaction? Ecstasy? Limen “Relationship” ? …. No Fuss !

A spirit of sophistication and realism of the commercial world.

Contingency mentality.

Customer Contempt.

From right brained to light brained.

The web, by putting the consumer in control is rendering CRM obsolete, replacing it with CMR – Customer Managed Relationships!

C R M

. . . Consumers are increasingly “time and effort” starved . . .

SATISFACTION (product parity) (smaller zones of tolerance (ZOT)

time minimisation +

effort minimisation !

•Attentioning and Microscopic Attention Spans.•With infomercials, mega logs and brands paying for space, the “info smog!” phenomenon will only increase.•People will find their experience of reality so fragmented that their ability to concentrate will be drastically reduced.•Micro-Interactions. Making the Experience Portable.•ROExp.•XM. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAPPING.

“READY-TO-KNOW”

Demanding consumers are in a constant ‘Ready to Go, READY-TO-KNOW’ state of mind, expecting any information deemed relevant to be available instantly, at their own terms. Think of it as the Google effect (demanding and getting instant answers) permeating all aspects of daily life.

“INFOLUST”

Experienced consumers are lusting after detailed information on where to get the best of the best, the cheapest of the cheapest, the first of the first, the healthiest of the healthiest, the coolest of the coolest, or on how to become the smartest of the smartest. Instant information gratification is upon us.

Much has already been said about search-based advertising and initiating word of mouth as new and more relevant ways to replace mass advertising, but there is a third alternative: TRYVERTISING, which is all about consumers becoming familiar with new products by actually trying them out.

Experimentation over message.

“TRYVERTISING”

TRYVERTISING

Experienced consumers could not care less about commercials, ads, banners and other fancy wording and imagery that is forced upon them. Tryvertising is all about consumers becoming familiar with new products by actually trying them out. Consumers can make up their minds based on their experience, not the company’s messages.

Skip Forward Generation – Are you talking to me? …

TRYVERTISING

•SOCIAL INFLUENCE MARKETING (SIM)

•Social Media Marketing•Feedback 3.0•but, …•“Social Not Working” (SNW) and “Social Networks Fatigue” (SNF) …

Recent Nielsen global research (2008) suggests consumers trust other consumers more than

advertisers across virtually every global geography.

Word of mouth may be big, but consumers looking for the best of the best, the first of the first increasingly do not connect to ‘just any other consumer’ anymore, they are hooking up with (and listening to) their taste ‘twins’; fellow consumers somewhere in the world who think react, enjoy and consume the way they do.

“TWINSUMER”

•We have become so starved for authentic live human contact that when it is offered up to us, we are all too happy to rejoice and tell the world.

•Understanding subjectivity beyond individuality.

Persona ecosystems are an effective way to look at users/consumers/customers in a way that goes deeper than marketing demographics. Cognitive mapping and the examination of individual scenario-building exercises which could be focused on examining the “touchpoints” and associations with the brand. Social Graph.

Persona Ecosystems – Scenario Building – “Brand Touchpoints”

•. . . Markets consist of human beings, not segmentation typologies . . . !

•Intelligent dialogue with customers

•Greater demand for (emotional) authenticity !

•Brain to Brain. Shared Emotion. Emotional Authenticity !

Emotional Values

•Emotional value is the economic value or monetary worth of feelings when customers positively (or negatively) experience products and services.•Emotional value, as much as quality or any other product attribute or dimension of an organisation’s worth can make or break a business … Emotional DESIGN

Emotional Values

The challenge for marketers is that consumers want less not more, sense (CSM) not nonsense, and above all, they want companies to “inject” Simplicity Marketing! This means repositioning brands to survive in an environment of savvy, cynical marketing literate consumers no longer seeking solace in false brand gods, hype and spin. Ironically, this may mean a return to classical marketing: solving people’s problems at a Profit Period.

Emotionomics – Emotional Authenticity

•Return on Emotion (ROE)•New era of consumer control. If companies do not handle well consumers’ emotional needs and wants, brands are at risk. Using sensory-emotive strategies. Emotional connections. Emotional Curves. Spontaneity and sincerity. Examples H-CI – facial coding, speech signals.

•To understand the true drivers of consumer behaviour•People’s attachment to a brand or a company (“hot buttons”)•Exploit the unconscious mind of consumers•Neurochemical release associated with memory and actions•fMRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) NeuroImaging•Brain Mapping – Identify Patterns of brain activity

NeuroMarketing

NeuroMarketing

•Medial Prefrontal Cortex. Somatosensory Cortex. The image of the brain in cross sections …•Mind of the Market Laboratory at HBS•Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET)•“Windows of Consciousness”•BDI (Beliefs, Intentions, Desires)•For example, NEUROSENSE (Oxford, England) can quantify and localise brain activity in areas involved in Emotion, Attention, Memory and Decision-making

Daimler-Benz, Coca Cola, Chrysler, Wal-Mart, Kodak, Motorola, DuPont, Hallmark, Home Depot, Unilever, Procter and Gamble, AT&T, General Motors, Kellogg

Scottish Equitable, Bradford and Bingley, HBOS, ABBEY, UK Lottery

NeuroMarketing

Automatic identification of a person based on his/her physiological or behavioural characteristics

Biometrics

Biometric software that allows companies to immediately identify customers when they walk into a store or log on to their computer

Database with biometric information, as well as market data, to allow marketers to follow a customer and direct ultra-customised marketing at them to influence spending/purchasing.

Voice Biometrics. Voice Prints

Those consumers who “buy” the marketing may well go a step forward, and become “PROSUMERS” - people who actively and deliberately take part in the process of design, shaping or even producing a product/service, knowing it is “for them”.

Prosumption challenges the customer-company relationship

Challenges traditional business logic where:

- Firms create value unilaterally

- Consumers are passive

- products & services represent the value

Brings a New frame of reference by:

- Focusing on the customer-company interaction as a new value creation

- co-creating value through Customer & Company

- taking into consideration that value is unique to each customer and is associated to personalized experiences;

Products & Services are only «means»

How does Prosumption transform the customer-company relationship?

•By elaborating a transparent process that allows customers to interact continually.

•By maintaining constant dialogue between the customer and the company.

•By enabling customers to «co-construct» their own unique value.

•By Letting customers have access to expertise:

- Interactions can occur anywhere /anytime / in the system

- R&D, suppliers, manufacturing, testing, sales ...,etc.

Enterprising is chic.

Increasingly, consumers are participants instead of passive audience members, and this megatrend manifests itself in a variety of ways.

Make way for MINIPRENEURS: consumers who are increasingly involved with the creation, production and trading of goods, services and experiences, instead of merely consuming them.

–Why? Just because they finally can.

“MINIPRENEURS”

A vast army of consumers turning entrepreneurs; including small and micro businesses, freelancers, side-businesses, weekend entrepreneurs, web-driven entrepreneurs, part-timers, free agents, cottage businesses, seniorpreneurs, co-creators, mompreneurs, pro-ams, solopreneurs, eBay traders, advertising-sponsored bloggers and so on.

“MINIPRENEURS”

Today’s aspiring and established MINPRENEURS truly have a highly-developed network of intermediaries, tools, resources, and processes at their disposal. It is an ecosystem on a much more elaborate scale than anyone foresaw. Have access, for peanuts, if not for free, to:

• Hardware, software, ICT and skills• Design, production and manufacturing• Monetizing existing assets• Marketplaces• Advertising• Travel• Talent, finance, payment, logistics

The MINIPRENEURS Ecosystems

CONSUMERS ARE BECOMING CREATIVE DIRECTORS

(Generation C)

(Customer-Made)

(Second Life)

(L’Oreal, Electrolux)

(RBS)

Look no further than sites like CaFepress.com The latter has a network of over 2 million members who have created more than 8 million designs on 70+ customisable products ranging from apparel and home and office accessories to music and data CDs and books to prints, posters and cards.

GENERATION C

Taking it one step further is US-based eMachineshop.com which lets ordinary consumers download free, easy-to-use software which they can use to design objects like car parts, door knobs, in metal or plastic.

Knowledgeable consumers and dialogue-minded corporations are co-creating new strategies, goods, services, experiences or advertising campaigns.

“CUSTOMER MADE”

…is getting bigger and bigger ….

The phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with experienced and creative consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in (and rewarding them for) what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed.

“CUSTOMER MADE”

•Brands will have a very difficult time succeeding in this new environment unless they figure out how to dance in this zone of “tension” between marketer and consumer interest.•Listening – Centred Marketing.•CGM

Consumer Generated Marketing (CGM)

Consumer content is already having a huge impact on certain sectors (i.e., entertainment business). The concept of the influential consumer has taken on a whole new level of importance. Consumer generated marketing is a fact of life to which all of us will have to adapt. This is the most revolutionary concept in marketing to come along in a long time. Emerging customers and disruptive technologies.

If we are truly living in an “Application Economy”, then marketing/advertising campaigns are not the end, albeit though they are still important. But the biggest shift powered by the digital lever is that the average Joe/Jane has become the new storyteller and digital experiences are becoming more important to an empowered consumer, who frankly has more options than ever before.

Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs)

It is the age of consumer emulation. A new trend wave. Across the marketplace, we are now seeing marketers aggressively borrowing from consumer behaviour as they develop their own strategies. Two good examples are Matell’s and JetBlue’s CEOs borrowing from consumer practices. Even Toyota, is respectfully borrowing from consumer best practices to build its own external blog.

Product origin moves from country-specific to locality. Value being placed on products from our own backyards.

GLOCALISATION AND LOCAVORES

As consumers grow less and less passive, are more ED2, KWLBB, are more savvy about marketing and the commercial realism, brands must modify their approach. Reading consumers is becoming more complex and is multidimensional -, contradictory and evolves around a contingency mentality (e.g., TRANSUMERS). Brands are losing control over their own image but also, can take advantage of the content creation (PROSUMPTION) and associated buzz generated by consumers (e.g., TWINSUMERS).

It is now, BRAIN VALUE (BR2BR and CSM), not BRAND VALUE …!

For decades, consumers in mature consumer societies have been trained to become experts in business, marketing and advertising …

•AWARE OF PRODUCT PARITY

•MORE DEMANDING ON VALUE

•KNOW WHAT IS BEHIND A BRAND

• Missing the notion of VALUE

• VALUE GAPS

• Need to get the balance right !

• Enlightened marketers should collaborate with consumers to build a dialogue and exchange process that creates value for both parties . . .

• FAIRER EXCHANGES - FAIRER MARKETING

(CONSUMER) HUMAN SENSING

Brands can become negative baggage as they are undermined by the very values they own in the mind of the consumers.

Brands seen as mental pollutants. Now, it is the era of the de-marketing chic …

(CONSUMER) Human Sensing

The deferential consumer, conditioned to salivate upon being buzzed by brands, has been buried along with the golden era of marketing.

Consumers are becoming increasingly brand immune and, in some cases, they are developing brand allergies …

Consumers, in general, do not like advertising. For decades, companies have annoyed them with more than 3,000 ad interruptions per day. And companies continue to “monetise their eyeballs” with ads on airline trays and petrol pumps… Everything works well when people are forced to absorb companies’ messages. But the model of interruption and annoyance is ending, especially due to digital technology.

• Consumers are becoming resistant to traditional marketing

• Research suggests the average consumer sees 3,000 ads each day; 65% of people feel “constantly bombarded” by ads – and 59% feel advertising is completely irrelevant to them (Yankelovich Partners (2006)

• Buzz marketing/Buzz networking (WON) is valued twice as much as more traditional media (GfK NOP 2006)

•New, emboldened consumers are going further by using the Internet to flame advertisers, and they are petitioning governments to limit advertisers’ reach (e.g., France).• A new model is emerging:

•Marketing with Meaning!•(MWM)

•Walls of Separation.

•Companies set up to deliver “value from our operations” are not designed to deliver consumers’ “value in my life”.

•Entails searching for and sourcing best value for genuinely customised and personalised service for solutions designed to improve personal productivity and emotional authenticity

•Helping individuals manage aspects of their lives better (“solution assembly”) and helping individuals reaching

important personal goals (“Passion Partnership”)

If marketers apply the concepts and processes of marketing without customer empathy, they are unlikely to develop strategies which deliver promised rewards.

Those consumers who bought into the concept of marketing will not be pleased with the gap between expectation and reality.

MARKETING WITHOUT HEART

•Marketers without heart use customer feedback to confirm how good they are, not how they could be better. They evaluate company S+W from their perspective, not the customer’s, and do little to understand or forecast evolving needs.

•The customer is the heart of marketing and marketing without heart will not make a difference… !

•(F)RIGID NO MORE !...

MARKETING WITHOUT HEART

•Higher psychological “deficits”

•Disconnecting and exit customers.

Marketing Immunisation

. . . By exposing individuals (consumers) to an immunogen (over-communicated marketing stimuli) in a controlled way (I.e., targeting, relational databases, cross-selling, prime-time television, etc.), their bodies will then be able to protect themselves from infections (I.e., repeated exposure, advertising bombardment, hard-selling, call-centre nuisance calls, deceptive messages, etc.) later on in life . . .

. . . The challenge for an organisation is to move to a situation where the customer starts buying from you rather than being sold to . . . !

We are only at the very beginning of a new journey – from “brand building” and “customer relationship management” to “consumer agency” !

The new type of understanding is driven less by knowing

about consumers and more by understanding with them !