©DataTalk Research Ltd April 2013

A View from the Data

Customer Experience; now the most important marketing function.

Personal experience of a brand is the thing that influences more people than anything else when they are choosing a product or retailer. Traditionally advice from family and friends was the thing that people relied on but back in 2013 the ‘big two’ in terms of influence swapped position and, as the chart below shows, the trend has continued.

Interestingly recommendations on social networks barely register on the scale.

So, personal brand experience followed by what other ‘trusted’ people think is the most influential but what about price? Here it would seem that price comparison websites are, perhaps, losing their appeal whereas offers

in store or via leaflets or email are maintaining theirs.

Maybe it comes down to trust. People seem to be looking to their own experience and specific offers. Perhaps a reflection of how trust, particularly in the internet has been eroded.

One exception seems to be on line customer reviews which are still showing a rising trend. See chart below.

©DataTalk Research Ltd April 2013

On line customer reviews have seen a dramatic rise in the last two years.

They have now overtaken comparison websites as a source of influence and taken over from “professional” printed or internet reviews. This would suggest that despite some bad publicity on the authenticity of “armature” reviews people think that on balance they can be trusted. Perhaps consumers tend to regard professional reviews as being a form of advertising?

It would seem that experience of brands ability to live up to the expectation they create is far more important than what they say about themselves whether by advertising or social media.

There may be nothing new in the fact that brand experience and reputation is important but, technology has provided consumers with a far bigger pool of knowledge of other peoples experience to draw on. What the data tells us is the amount of influence each source has and its importance relative to other influences such as price and other incentives.

The implications for marketers seem clear. It is now more than ever about creating the right customer experience and delivering on customer expectation. As Mike Hoban of Thomas Cook said at the recent Drum Digital Convergence panel, ‘marketers must embrace technology and ‘take responsibility’ for the customer experience or face becoming redundant and letting IT departments overtake them’.

Brand reputation is king; Brand Reputation Management is now the most important marketing function.

Notes:

The British Consumer Index is a continuous tracking study of the population. These figures are based on a population representative sample of 33,947 face to face in home interviews (aged 15+).

The British Consumer Index also covers communication channel preference, likelihood to purchase and financial optimism set against other factors such as Internet access and use and 11 segmentation models from; Acorn, Cameo, Censation, Mosaic, Personicx, P

2 and

OAC.

For more details contact:

Steve Abbott

T; 0203 286 1981

E; stevea@thebps.co.uk

Skype; steveathebps