Digital marketing recasts emotional interaction with brands
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.
How are shoppers' perceptions of and emotional interaction with brands being altered by digital marketing?
Grocery shoppers are being trained to hunt for their favorite brand coupons in the pre-shop phase. Downloaded coupons get up to an 85 percent redemption rate with current brand users but they are failing to persuade switchers or recruit new users.
That means that true pre-shop consideration — that is, buying a new brand or switching — is moving outside of the coupon hunt to another media platform. Evidence shows at least some attention is being drawn by social media.
Meanwhile, what is the future of innovations such as Google Glass and the Apple Watch?
Google isn't really supporting Glass at this point. However, augmented reality — digital text and images overlaid onto the viewer's real world — will likely be brought back in a different and more sophisticated form. As one of first "Explorers," I can say that Glass was clunky and socially awkward, but fun.
Source: Apple
Apple Watch will probably end up as a more useful wearable "platform" which connects to a user's other wearable devices. A connected earbud, watch and a contact lens together could enable a wide-variety of digital interfaces for the user.
But, unlike a smartphone, the watch only allows one hand to be used. The watch doesn't overlay on the user's field of vision like Glass did, and it needs an earbud to speak "privately." The ideal is a completely hands-free experience, which offers visual and auditory interaction without undesired social signals.
As for the future of digital in grocery, the forces at work changing the dynamics of the food consumption include:
- Shrinking household size due to lower birth rates and lower marriage rates;
- Urbanization;
- On-demand attitude toward purchasing goods and services.
This implies that the digital aspect of interacting with stores (in whatever form) in the future will be opt-in, in the context of time and place and personalized to each buyer.
There will be stores that offer a highly personalized experience, and near-fanatical users. There will be less personalized and digitized stores, which will have older shoppers and those who are less digitally-enabled and perhaps poorer. Finally, I believe it's nearly inevitable that those who are not digitally empowered will in fact be "disabled" in the future.