*Paraphrased from a recent report by Accenture, we look at the ways shoppers and consumers have changed in just a few years and how companies and retailers can remain relevant for them.

Consumer and shopper habits remained the same or similar for decades previously. They changed only when there was a major disruption in the market that warranted it or when consumption power moved from one generation to another. This was usually a once in a lifetime occurrence.

A few lifetimes in one

These days, we pack the experiences of a few different lifetimes into one. We wrote about this previously.

According to the article by Accenture, ‘The world today is radically different from the world of two years ago … or even two months ago. A non-stop barrage of external life forces—health, economic, social, environmental, political and beyond—is affecting day-to-day decisions in unavoidable ways.’

We, at salesBeat, argue, this has been the case for a few years now. Ever since social media came into being. Social media has proved to be the both the delight and bane of a brand’s existence. In the initial days of social media, brands were excited by the potential for them to target consumer and shopper groups.

Social media influencing sales & consumer behaviour

While the articles by Accenture, Forbes and by McKinsey, don’t specifically call this out, social media has been influencing what consumers buy and when for sometime now. This has been making it difficult for both brands and retailers to anticipate demand and stocking requirements.

Another layer of complexity that brands did not take into account with social media is what happens when consumers post their negative experiences with the brand on social media. Or when certain (in)actions cast the brand in a poor light in the court of public sentiment. ‘Cancel culture’ has taken over the world of FMCG & retail too as we saw during the early days of the Ukraine/Russia conflict.

In a time and age when everything makes its way online sometime or another, companies need to anticipate not just how their ads perform, but how the brand itself is perceived by consumers.

Changing priorities for consumers

While sustainability was top of mind for most Gen Z & Millennial consumers & shoppers previously, today, with rising inflation sustainability has taken a back seat. Where personalisation and authenticity were important factors in shopper decisions, again, these are playing second fiddle(s) to value for money today.

According to the Accenture report referenced, ‘People are giving themselves permission to be inconsistent. As they evaluate a growing list of things that matter to them, consumers realize they can’t expect perfect choices in every circumstance. As they make decisions, paradoxes become inevitable. And those inconsistencies are being seen as strengths, not weaknesses.’

Market & geopolitical realities

In the last 3 years, not only has social media been a constant in how it has influenced behaviour, but so have covid, unseasonal weather (climate change) and conflicts, in the form or ‘war’ or trade conflicts.

These have completely changed (and continue to change) the way we live, work and shop. However, companies, both retail and brand are still playing catch up driving uncertainties from a supply perspective.

See consumers as a whole

Accenture suggests 3 ways a company can catch up and keep pace:

• See customers in their full life
• Solve for shifting scenarios
• Simplify for relevance

The paper by Accenture resonated with us as we developed salesBeat keeping in mind the consumer and their life. salesBeat isn’t only about how consumers shop or how shoppers behave, but also about how they react to the changes in their life and how this in turn impacts their choices. Also, as Salesbeat tracks the drivers of consumer behaviour and does not assume that the environment remains static, shifting scenarios are accounted for through them.

More companies need to start seeing their consumers as people whose decisions change with the circumstances around them. Currently their personas are developed based on socio economic and demographic factors that can change with changes in the economic environment around them. After all, shoppers who previously used to frequent ‘premium’ supermarket chains are now trading down to cheaper alternatives, including frequenting discounters more often.

For more detail or to read the Accenture paper in full, follow this link. If you’d like to learn more about salesBeat, visit our website or mail me on veena@salesbeat.co