Graeme Crossley on fixing Brand Pain

Graeme Crossley

 With Christmas just around the corner, we are urging retail brands in particular to take stock of the changes happening in the sector and adapt their strategies to take account of the multiple influences that are now affecting consumer purchase decisions, in particular the use of the web as a place to gain insight prior to making a purchase.
 
In one of our recent whitepapers, we revealed that traditional consumer insight methodologies are no longer sufficient in understanding buyer behavior and brand owners need to have a significantly deeper level of understanding of what motivates and influences consumer attitudes. A customer that has a good experience will typically tell 3 to 5 people, but a customer who has a poor experience will tell more than 20. When this is trend occurs via the web, these numbers can rapidly multiply and could spell disaster for brands that don’t have strategies in place to combat online negative chatter.  

A couple of months ago, we quizzed over 800 consumers about the influence of online reviews on their purchase decisions during August and September, and revealed that they relied heavily on online reviews for:
 
Consumer electronics                  56%
Home Furnishings                       33%
Apparel                                      21%
White Goods                              45%
DIY & Gardening                         18%
Entertainment Products              12%
Sports Goods                              9%
Food                                           2%

But this isn’t just about adopting trendy new social media strategies or having a fan group on Facebook. It is about directly interacting with your customers wherever they choose to have conversations about you. Customers expect and want to engage in two-way dialogue with the brands they use. The Internet should not just be viewed as a sales channel or an additional way to advertise your brand but as a method of communication.