By Tunde Cockshott, Creative Consultant at Amaze.
The easily swayed consumer
In the world of consumer goods few brands have the luxury of selling their products through their own retail network. In most cases, a product on the shelf of a real world store has to sell itself at the final point of purchase. It is alone and naked, unable to rely on the back up of trained and unbiased sales staff.
Sixty five percent of European adults research a considered purchase online, (Servicing The Multichannel Buyer In Europe, Forrester 2010), but as a recent GFK study (www.gfk.com) showed, even in the age of the Internet, 70% of purchase decisions are still made at the point of purchase. In only 30% of cases do customers buy the brand of product that they had initially set out to.
It appears that all of the advertising efforts put into persuading and convincing the consumer of a product’s merit often creates a demand for that product category, rather than a particular product brand. And unless you are an Apple or another iconic brand, prospective consumers are easily swayed at the point of purchase.
Price is a big factor, with many consumers opting for a special offer once they are inside a store. The strength of a brand is clearly an important factor in determining whether or not consumers actually follow through on their intentions to buy a particular product – but increasingly price is winning, with over half of European consumers agreeing price is more important than brand when making a purchase decision (Digital Camera Purchasing Criteria In A Slow Market, Forrester 2009).
Even in the age of empowered consumers, the effect of being confronted by a wall of similar products and price promotions can sway the most well researched buyer. The control of the marketing message by the brand and its impact on the purchase decision has been almost erased from the bricks and mortar retail experience.
Stores tightly control the retail environment, and in doing so they reduce every product to a mute extra in the shopper’s experience. As a result, digital televisions, digital cameras and other consumer products are often plastered with stickers as manufacturers make a weak last ditch effort to persuade consumers of the superiority of their product.
The rise of connected shopping
But things are changing as increased mobile connectivity is slowly but surely changing the way people shop. Consumers can now use mobile apps to scan barcodes and recognise product images, allowing them to compare prices, access reviews and share their prospective purchases with their social graph.
But even this doesn’t solve the problem. These apps are shopping apps, designed to help the consumer to make the best purchase, rather than to aid the producers to make a sale. While apps and simple Google searches may provide the shopper with the manufacturers’ product support material, this is a much more complex interaction compared to the simplicity of most price comparison apps.
If manufacturers and brands are to compete, products need digital support untainted by third party influence and pulling on brand reinforcements when needed. The product has to become its own digital ambassador. Advanced systems that provide this form of support, such as Microsoft Surface applications http://bit.ly/gyT6p1 and MIT’s Desk Lamp http://bit.ly/fft22p, give us a glimpse of potential future solutions. However, these are costly, rely on dedicated hardware to provide augmented information, and retailers can easily filter the content.
One route is dedicated apps delivered by the brand, but this implies that the consumer already has an affinity to that brand and is not only willing to buy or spend the time downloading a bespoke app for a single purchase, but that they remember to use it. With apps such as Amazon’s on the market, the Swiss army knife of the digital shopping experience, it is unlikely that any branded app can compete on these terms.
Making your products speak for themselves
Instead of text labels and images, products should also be using QR codes to provide links to dedicated content. The ongoing march of the smart phone is making the use of QR codes a viable proposition, and by using any one of the many reader apps available, consumers can access branded product information at any time and in any place. Brands are still seen as a trusted source of information but not of unbiased recommendations, so if the link acts as a guided tour of the product, or a virtual shop assistant, it can be presented as a helpful aid rather than a pure sales pitch.
The presentation of this information and how to navigate the minefield of consumer perception of content has to also be taken into account. The in-store delivery has to be timely and bite-sized, and the emotional experience of viewing and handling the product should be amplified with rational arguments and information that aids understanding and removes obstacles to purchase.
Take the example of cameras used by MIT. The user reads the code using their phone and a dedicated mobile site offers access to a set of options. Those who just want to know the facts can view the specifications, while someone less assured can see a helpful jargon buster explaining the important technical terms. Users can also listen to an audio-guided tour as they handle the product, or a short, quick-response buying guide could assess how they intend to use it, providing advice on not only this model but others by the same manufacturer.
As we move forward, other ways of delivering products as digital ambassadors will develop. The integration of Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities into mobile phones is viewed primarily as a way of achieving the digital wallet concept, where payments are made by passing your phone near a reader. However, NFC also has the potential to allow phones to read information by simply being in the close proximity of a NFC tag.
Augmented reality would seem to promise a richer, immersive in-store experience. However, current marker and non-marker systems tend to be closed, with bespoke content requiring specific reader apps. At some stage a standard format for markerless image augmented reality readers may appear, and when it does, brands could use this to deliver information to support the sale of a product.
If brands cannot make direct contact with consumers, a second line of action is to ensure that online retailers are provided with content that meets the needs of traditional PC and tablet users, as well as mobile small screen users. Simply providing the same experience on different devices is not sufficient. The content and type of information should meet the needs of the user, taking into account the time and the location. The mobile, in-store consumer needs access to information that aids, clarifies and nudges towards the correct purchase decision, far from the same level of depth needed by the desk-bound researcher.
The days of the dumb naked product cannot continue. Companies must reinforce brand and product defenses against consumers being swayed at the point of purchase and call in the digital cavalry.