![]()
PART I
Customer experience marketing
Back to origins
![]()
1
FOUR KEY CHANGES IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Digital, empowerment, emotion, and postmodernism
Purpose and context
Today’s consumers are becoming familiar with instant accessibility and will expect their brand experiences to be personalized and emotional. Thus, brands need to better understand their customers and the emerging social trends to deliver experiences customers really want, through meaningful messages that echo through different marketplaces and touchpoints. Understanding consumer experiences is an essential mission for marketers and scholars and cannot be examined without considering the key changes in consumer behavior that will impact marketing most in the future, such as the transition from a modern to a postmodern consumer society or the common use of technology and digital devices. This chapter seeks to explore four major key changes in consumer behavior: digital, empowerment, emotion, and postmodernism. These new trends can affect customer experience and help companies design suitable experiences by taking into account both tangible (e.g., functional) and intangible (e.g., symbolic, social, emotional) needs.
Learning outcomes
At the end of this chapter you will learn more about the macro, meso, and the micro factors that can positively or negatively affect consumer behaviors and the whole customer experience. This chapter will bring a comprehensive framework that includes tangible and intangible elements you should consider to design a suitable and satisfying customer experience.
Digital transformation and its impact on consumption
This section will introduce the main drivers of the digital transformation in today’s societies. I will examine the way the drivers of the digital transformation can affect consumption activities, and the main emerging challenges and opportunities for brands and companies.
Drivers of digital transformation
So far, I have identified three key drivers of the digital transformation: technological, demographic, and socioeconomic (Figure 1.1).
• Technological drivers. The report of the World Economic Forum published in 2016 identifies four major technological drivers that led to today’s digital transformation: mobile and Internet penetration, connected devices, big data and the cloud, and user interfaces. Table 1.1 summarizes the characteristics of each trend and its implications in terms of social changes and consumption practices. The combination of these technological consumption trends has contributed to the development of new consumer behaviors and expectations, as well as business innovation, meaning that companies have to rethink their offers to make them fit with the emerging profile of digitized consumers.
TABLE 1.1 Characteristics of the digital transformation
| Technology | Characteristic |
| Mobile and Internet penetration | The World Economic Forum report (2016) states mobile phone penetration has increased from 1% of the population in 1995 to 73% in 2014 and Internet penetration has almost doubled over seven years. The number of smartphone subscriptions is also predicted to reach 4 billion by 2025 mostly in emerging markets |
| Connected devices | The number of connected devices in the world is estimated to continue to rise allowing the translation of information from environments and behaviors into smart data that provides real-time customization |
| Data analytics and the cloud | The intensification of data collection through emails, connected objects, mobile apps, social and e-commerce platforms, and the need for automated advanced analytics will continue to grow and will need more virtual space or cloud for storage |
| User interfaces | User interfaces allowing humans to interact with machines are becoming more common, enabling tasks to be carried out more quickly and efficiently. In the future, physical user interfaces can be replaced by control and interaction through Artificial Intelligence |
• Demographic drivers. There are two demographic drivers of digital transformation: urbanization and accessibility. Urbanization has contributed to the development of new ways of delivery and supply approaches to match consumer wants and expectations. The United Nations (2014) predicts that almost 60% of the world’s population will settle in urban zones by 2050. Furthermore, the World Economic Forum1 says: “a large part of this emerging demographic is based in developing markets where improving standards of living and income are driving increased access to digital technology and connectivity” (2016: 7). Mobile phones and Internet access are available even in the most disadvantaged consumption cultures in the world. Making technology accessible for everyone has contributed to enhancing the development of new digital-driver consumption modes. For digital pure players, making technology accessible to everyone, including vulnerable people (e.g., individuals with disabilities) is a vital element in their strategies. Grach (2015) states that Microsoft,2 for example, has a long tradition and a strong positioning in terms of allowing and facilitating accessibility. For more than 25 years, Microsoft has concentrated its efforts on developing technologies that facilitate the use of devices by individuals, empower them, and provide them with the appropriate tools and training to use technology that meets their functional, social, economic, educational demands, and other expectations.
MINI-CASE 1.1 HOW APPLE IS MAKING TECHNOLOGY ACCESSIBLE DURING GLOBAL ACCESSIBILITY AWARENESS DAY (GAAD)
The idea of a Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) started in 2012 with a blog post written by a web developer, Joe Devon. The objective of GAAD is to raise awareness about making technological experiences, including web, mobile, social media, and other digital devices accessible and usable to people with different disabilities. In 2017, Apple highlighted GAAD with a “designed for everyone” video series. Apple has a long history of working to make technology accessible through developing hardware products and software platforms. To display all the digital tools developed to increase accessibility, Apple posted in the GAAD a series of seven videos to YouTube showing how true and reliable individuals can develop several usages of Mac, iOS, and Apple Watch accessibility qualities ranging from Switch Control to the use of Siri and VoiceOver. Each video tells the story of specific individuals with disabilities and shows how Apple is making digital experiences accessible, easy to use, and convenient:
• Video 1: “Designed for Carlos” displays Carlos, the singer and drummer of a metal band using VoiceOver on his iPhone to call transportation, take photos, and post updates online;
• Video 2: “Designed for Andrea D” shows Andrea, a nursing student, using her Apple Watch to track wheelchair-based workouts and sharing her activity with friends to encourage the disabled community;
• Video 3: “Designed for Meera P” displays Meera, a teenager, who loves soccer and expresses herself using TouchChat on an iPad;
• Video 4: “Designed for Patrick L” displays Patrick, radio DJ and music producer cooking for his family by using iOS app TapTapSee to identify ingredients through his iPhone camera;
• Video 5: “Designed for Shane R” displays Shane, a choir director, using made for iPhone hearing aids, Live Listen, and iPad app Essential Elements in her music teaching with middle school band students;
• Video 6: “Designed for Ian M” shows Ian, a Pacific Northwest lover, using Siri to start FaceTime calls or capturing photos using Switch Control;
• Video 7: “Designed for Todd S” shows Todd who runs a technology consulting company using Siri, Switch Control, and HomeKit to manage his lights, sound, security system, doors, and locks.
• Socioeconomic drivers. So far, I have identified two main socioeconomic factors that drive digital transformation in today’s societies: the rise of digital native consumption cultures and the alternative sharing economy model:
The rise of digital native cultures: millennials and post-millennials are part of an emerging digital native culture that is a global phenomenon. In these global youth cultures, young people born between 1980 to the present are viewed as digital natives (Tapscott, 2009) and a distinctive generation with consumption practices that make them different from their prior generations. Millennials and post-millennials are the dominant largest current generation within the marketplace (Sweeney, 2005). They are also viewed as empowered and digital experts who can use their new knowledge to improve their consumption experiences and their social life. Furthermore, young people have developed multitasking behaviors, as well as collaborative and interactive modes of consumption enabled by social media. While these millennials and post-millennials belong to a dominant living generation of consumers, which has a great economic potential, brand managers and marketing professionals should develop a deeper understanding of their consumption cultures where social and mobile technologies and the Internet allow them to embrace new consumption practices, such as online sharing and collaborative behaviors.
MINI-CASE 1.2 COLLABORATIVE TOURISM EXPERIENCES AMONGST MILLENNIAL AND POST-MILLENNIAL TOURISTS IN THE SHARING ECONOMY
Considering millennial and post-millennial tourists as co-producers or co-creators of value has changed the marketing way of thinking from top-down to bottom-up. Millennial and post-millennial are considered as a “collaboration generation,” since they are active producers of user-generated content who can contribute to the co-creation of value by activating their digital skills and knowledge to shape the company’s offers. Thus, millennial and post-millennial tourists became more powerful and influential and are commonly considered as a valuable and authentic foundation of innovation and information for industries and consumers. Batat and Hammedi (2017) analyzed three popular collaborative consumption initiatives amongst millennial and post-millennial tourists: Airbnb, Couchsurfing, and Wwoofing to explore the meanings of collaborative consumption and the dimensions of engagement, sharing, expertise, and efficacy in millennial and post-millennial collaborative consumption in tourism. The conclusions of their study show that 1) Airbnb.com is a functional tool for collaborative consumption amongst millennials and post-millennials, 2) Couchsurfing.com is used by millennials and post-millennials for tourism social experiences, and 3) Wwoofing.com is a form of responsible and engaged collaborative consumption. The main differences are summarized in Table 1.2.
TABLE 1.2 Collaborative consumption and sharing tourism website usages amongst millennial and post-millennial tourists
Source: Adapted from Batat and Hammedi (2017)
