Influencing buyers' purchase decision

Digital disruption has little to do with technology and more with humans

Marketers are increasingly realising that enhanced customer experience leads to creating greater consumer satisfaction that helps in differentiating brands in a hyper-competitive market space. This satisfaction plays a big role in the customers’ final purchase decision. It’s very intangibility and subjectivity have opened doors for organisations to focus on engaging and creating an environment that aims at influencing the buyer by separating themselves from other brands jostling for buyer attention.

Traditional business models are slowly becoming obsolete in the current market environment as these models entail departments and functions operating in silos with limited collaboration of each other’s intelligence and expertise. This prevents companies from formulating innovative strategies focused around enhancing customer experience and taking it to the next level.

A recent research report released by the Boston Consulting Group reveals that India’s nominal year-on-year expenditure growth of 12 per cent is more than double the estimated global rate of 5 per cent and will make India the third largest consumer market by 2025. Increased exposure to a wider range of goods and services has translated to an increase in consumption across all sectors. Customer motivation to spend has also evolved to seek experiences rather than the products itself. This has left marketers perplexed because legacy thinking in marketing is about managing inbound and outbound channels, separately. Today, customers do not like to be pursued yet want to feel valued. Rapid advancement in technology, coupled with deeper internet penetration in the country, has transformed how brands and customers interact.  We are now a part of the ‘Experience age’ and customers are less concerned about what information to consume and more focused on ‘how’ they want to consume it. Therefore, there is a growing demand for ‘All bound’. Marketers need to manage the ‘All bound’ experience of our customers through different legacy, traditional and digital channels. 

Organisations need to understand that digital disruption has little to do with technology and more to do with humans. Devices and technology that did not exist ten years ago, are now a part of our routine life. While aiming to create novelty in customer experience, organisations must also explore strategies that cater to a more unique albeit sophisticated segment of customer that is emerging of late. This segment is characterised by customers that are more cynical to traditional marketing tools and are also more informed, better connected and hugely influential due to the ever-increasing power of social media.  These are the millennial, who have been and in time to come will remain to be a big part of an organisations’ customer outreach program. Therefore, companies need to become more contextual, personal and proactive to adapt to the dynamic changes in our surroundings. Providing an enhanced customer experience requires marketing professionals to reskill and develop right technical expertise to use big data and analytics creatively. 

Competition has been reset. A company can either be disrupted or be the disrupter. Customer experience prevails over company products. While user experience remains intangible and challenging to predict, it presents a huge opportunity that organisations can use to their advantage and leave their competition far behind.