Connected customer

"There was a time when traditional retail was all about stocking products customers might have wanted, letting everybody know through oldschool mass­market advertising what was in store, and when prospective customers visited, making it as easy as possible for them to buy” (Sosa, 2015).

Today, more and more people use online shopping to get their shopping done. Due to technology and globalization, we get access to most stores online. There is no need to go to the shops anymore and look for new clothes.

Consumers go online with their smartphones, tablets or computers and start browsing through lots of websites/online stores until they find what they were looking for and get it delivered to their homes. However, that describes only the process of searching for products/services and buying it, but the customers stay online even after purchasing the desired goods.

Since the internet and being connected is so easy and convenient, a lot of customers use the internet to evaluate their purchase decision, for example on social media channels. A lot of people tend to upload photos and videos of their purchases and describe their shopping experiences (Zhang et al., 2017, p.25). Hence, online reviews have a huge impact on our purchasing decisions (Sosa, 2015). 

However, the technological development did not only bring up the chance for online shopping, but also the opportunity to stay in contact with our friends and family although they are not in the shop with us. Especially smartphones allow us to send pictures and videos whenever we want. Consequently, when a customer goes to a fashion retailer without their friends, they will try clothes on and takes pictures of it to send it to a friend to ask for opinions.

Roques: https://www.mycustomer.com/service/channels/what-does-having-connected-customers-really-mean-for-your-business

That leads us to a ‘connected consumer’ – even though the customer comes to the shop by himself/herself, they will not decide without the opinion of friends/family or without checking the product online for a better price (Sosa, 2015).

How about you though? Have you done it like this, send pictures to a friend first before you bought the new dress/ jumper or checked the product online for a better price? To be honest, I do it quite often, especially when I'm not 100% convinced by the product or when it comes to technology. But isn’t that crazy? Are we not able to make our own decisions anymore because of technology? 

Stay tuned!

 

Reference List:

Roques, G. (2017): What does having 'connected customers' really mean for business?. Availabe at:

https://www.mycustomer.com/service/channels/what-does-having-connected-customers-really-mean-for-your-business (Accessed 08.10.2019)

Sosa, E. (2015): ‘The Rise of the Connected Consumer and What it means for the Retail Industry’ The Huffington Post

Zhang, Y., Trusov, M., Stephen, A. and Jamal, Z. (2017): ‘Online Shopping and Social Media: Friends or Foes?’, Journal of Marketing, EBSCOhost [online]. (Accessed: 07.10.2019)

New Realities for a Marketing Manager

My first blog post will tell you a bit about the new realities that a Web Marketing Manager has to face.
According to Kotler (2016, p. 35) Technology, Globalization and Social Responsibility are the main changes the market is going through.

Well, I think that is not really a new phenomenon!
The technology has already found its place in our world and so has Globalization. We do have access to TV’s, Computers, Laptops, Smartphones, and even Smartwatches and nearly everyone, at least in Europe, owns at least one of these things. And each of these technologies can have been produced all over the world and bought nearly everywhere in the world.

But what really challenges the Marketer and even so consumer, is the fact that everything is so fast-moving. Once you have bought the newest phone, there might be even a newer one available only one day later.

Have you ever experienced that yourself? Isn’t that crazy and also kind of frightening?
It makes it hard for us to be up to date all the time. And I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t decide what is better technology and what isn’t. I can hardly see any differences between the phone from today and the one from yesterday. I’m not even sure if there really is a huge difference between these phones or if the market is just making us believe it. However, technology also comes up with a lot of new opportunities. Without the technology we wouldn’t be able to text or call our friends 24/7, we wouldn’t be able to check out the American market or not even the UK market for new releases or read the news from all over the world. Without technology, we would be still living in our small villages, cities or whatever and wouldn’t know what’s going on in the world, probably still using horse-drawn carriages.

So, in my opinion, no one really can avoid these new challenges. Everyone has to face them and find their way to deal with it.

Reference List: 

Kotler, P. and Keller, K. (2016): Marketing Management. 15th edn. London" Pearson Education