5 Consumer Trend Stats Retailers Can't Ignore

Tim: Okay. If you are a retailer, I'm about to share five consumer stats that retailers cannot ignore and a lot more. Stay tuned. Richard, I'm breaking it down. I picked five stats. I'm going to quiz you on these. And by the way, these five stats are coming from the Consumer Trends Index from 2021. And you can get the full report with dozens of stats, but I'm going to tell retailers why these five really matter.

Richard: Let's do it.

Tim: You're cool with it?

Richard: I'm ready.

Tim: Okay. First off, retailers had a rough year. Okay?

Richard: Right.

Tim: Whether it was clicks or bricks, like, maybe if you were on the clicks end, you did pretty well.

Richard: If you were Amazon, you did brilliantly.

Tim: Yeah, okay. But on the bricks side of things, you know, in- store, you had a rough time. We know a lot even closed and et cetera. So you have to get into a digital transformation. This should have been a wake- up call for those of you that aren't digitally savvy, aren't really heavy on the clicks, and you were more on the bricks, but you'd be surprised, maybe, to learn that email was the number one driver of sales from the 5,000 global respondents in this Consumer Trends Index survey. In fact, did you know that email outperforms a banner ad by 39%?

Richard: Boom.

Tim: Furthermore, email outperforms mobile by 92% from a offer to buy. So email is a huge, huge, huge channel. It's still number one, et cetera. And Rich, we know what we can do with email, right? Zero- party data and personalization. What should retailers know about?

Richard: Look, at the end of the day, retailers need to get away from kind of mass best batch and blast to sort of old cohorts. And rather, think about email triggered from zero- party data and first- party data behavior that one can see from consuming all of your data into an EDP. From really understanding the context of every individual, where they are in the customer life cycle and their unique motivations, desires, and preferences, and then trigger that email based on their behavior. That kind of email really drives results.

Tim: Yeah, and look, as a retailer, you have an unlimited amount of brands and cache to ride the coattails of. I mean, you can use the brands that you're selling and your products on your shelves and connect with consumers. So all right, moving on. I know I just beat up on mobile, but mobile is real. And if you don't have a mobile strategy, it's no longer a nice- to- have. It's a must- have, and it's got to be a keystone of your digital transformation. So here's some stats on that. Did you know that 50% of consumers downloaded a mobile app from a store, from a retailer, in 2020? Also, just over 50% bought something with mobile other than apps, music, or video, you know, entertainment on their phone. So the value of mobile is huge. Rich, do you use mobile to make purchases?

Richard: I do, actually, yes.

Tim: Who do you do?

Richard: I do. I actually bought a pair of jeans on a mobile phone, which I imagine is probably one of the more rare types of purchases on a mobile, but I did it. I'm now mobile fashion.

Tim: And you know, you have a great Canadian tuxedo at home, I'm sure, with those jeans and that denim shirt you have. So, cool. Let's move on. Look, price is king, but guess who's queen? Customer experience. We can't talk enough about this. And if you're a retailer and you do not have a customer experience strategy or putting customer experience at the heart of your entire retail operation, you're missing the boat. Nearly one- third of shoppers, again, 5, 000 global, nearly one- third of shoppers describe themselves as deal hunters. So that's price.

Richard: Right.

Tim: Cool. We get that, and I'm a little bit there too. But there was a 31% increase year over year into 2020 from consumers making a purchase based on speed of fulfillment, just one part of consumer experience.

Richard: Right.

Tim: So if you couple that with your physical and your digital experiences and the personalized offers and understanding your consumers, like you just mentioned, zero- party data, data explicitly given to you, the retailer, from consumers, and if you personalize that. You got a winning combo. So, Rich, I don't know if you have any thoughts there or any comments, but experience is queen.

Richard: 100%. 100%. And you know, what we saw interestingly, was that the hunt for bargains didn't actually increase in a pandemic year, which was pretty interesting. One would assume it would.

Tim: Sure.

Richard: No, actually, things like a brand's ethical positions were super important.

Tim: Yes, their values. Yes.

Richard: And of course, the customer experience, such as fulfillment, obviously, were big drivers this year, which I thought was very interesting.

Tim: No, it is interesting because people lost their job and you'd think bargaining shopping would go up. And again, you're going to have a ton of stats if you get that Consumer Trends Index, which is complimentary from us at Cheetah Digital. I'm moving to number four. Number four, not just personalization because we can beat that all day long, we love that. Execution in personalization matters. Now, if you think you're just going to phone it in as a marketer and your marketing team or your retailer's going to phone it in and use segmentations and just the same ad and filtration that your competitors have, it's not going to work. Especially, I'd be really wary of the new death of the cookie, and Google's FloC, and these cohorts. We're going from understanding people on a one- to- one level to lumping them back into segments, males, females, et cetera. So there's some stats here I want to share. 42% of consumers said that they are regularly receiving irrelevant content or offers from organizations.

Richard: Personalization done badly.

Tim: Yeah. I mean, don't assume, don't infer from behavior and web traffic and this and that. You know, if they go from this page to that page.

Richard: It can't be your only vector.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely.

Richard: You've got to start asking consumers individually with interactive experiences.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah, and here's another one that should be easy for retailers. 28% of consumers said that the messages they were getting, that's mobile, SMS, et cetera, did not even recognize their shopping history. So if somebody's spending money with you, take that, get that into your database.

Richard: These are quick wins. These are quick wins.

Tim: Yeah. They are quick wins. So, I know you have thoughts around consolidating data, being able to act on data.

Richard: Well, look, the one thing that I found interesting about, kind of personalization falling short, was that 30% of consumers were stating they were getting messages based on information about them that they hadn't shared directly with the brand. I mean, we know from the Consumer Index Report that that kind of behavior from marketers is turning off consumers in their drove, so be careful. The choices you make around personalization can be more harmful than good.

Tim: Yeah. So don't be that retailer that does it wrong. Okay. Lastly, this is our fifth stat, but again, the report has tons. You're going to want it. It's loaded with stuff. Loyalty matters. That's all we have to say, right? Loyalty matters. And here's a stat for you. 29% of consumers are not loyal to a given organization because that organization did nothing to encourage their loyalty, even though they may be a frequent shopper.

Richard: Wow.

Tim: So if you have people in your stores, on your websites, looking to buy, create a loyalty program, right? Customer experience should be at the heart of their journey for purchase, but loyalty also matters. So what are you doing to keep them loyal?

Richard: Yeah. And put that context with the fact that the IAB, as we talked about recently, came out and said that, actually," Advertisers, retailers, brand, need to be thinking about what's the value exchange to incentivize direct- to- brand engagement over the longterm," because of all the disruptions in privacy is now putting on the onus to get that direct- to- brand relationship. Because people like Google are saying, they will only give you a path to do the types of personalization you used to if you've got the direct- to- consumer relationship, right?

Tim: Yeah. Yeah.

Richard: So it's super, super important.

Tim: So loyalty's huge. You got to do it right. We have a great case study with Vans, which I know is a brand, not a retailer, but they act like a retailer because they sell direct. And they are getting, let me get this right, 50% of their direct- to- consumer North American revenue comes from their loyalty program, and they get a considerable amount more revenue from people in their loyalty program. So take a page from that book, collect the data that you need, create a loyalty program. And I think there's one other stat. I'm going to go off the top of my head here, might correct it in the graphic. I believe 79% of consumers said that they would much rather have brands and organizations, and retailers invest into a loyalty offering rather than more ads on Facebook.

Richard: Yeah, 79%. Yeah.

Tim: 79%.

Richard: Yeah.

Tim: So there you go. All right. That's all the time we have. You can get the full 2021 Consumer Trends Index at cheetahdigital. com. We'll have a link here if you're watching this on LinkedIn. Look, we do this all the time. We hope you found this helpful. We hope to find those stats impactful as you build your strategy for the rest of the year.

Richard: Yeah, 100% and tune in next week.

Tim: Adios.