|
E-Business
Issues
___________________________________________
Crafting
a compelling consumer experience in the connected world
 |
Kingshuk Hazra
Analyst, Asia Pacific - GartnerG2.
GartnerG2 is the business strategy division of Gartner.
|
The
raison d’etre for Creating a Compelling Consumer
Experience
Lessons from the Journey of a Humble Coffee Bean
A century ago, coffee beans were simply harvested
and sold by the weight as a commodity. Over time,
coffee evolved from a commodity to a product –
branded, colourfully packaged, prominently displayed
on store shelves, and supported with advertising budgets.
Today, drinking coffee is a fashion-statement, an
unforgettable consumer experience, brought about by
coffee chains like Starbucks. Daily, millions of consumer’s
worldwide experience the warm, cheerful ambience of
a coffee shop where they can sip any of a variety
of coffees while they enjoy a pastry, read the paper,
or plug their laptop into the nearest port. Coffee
consumption turns into a memorable, repeatable experience
that fits into –and enhances – their lifestyle.
With each transition, the basis of the coffee bean’s
economic value changed. New jobs and industries bloomed;
old ones disappeared. Today, the newest differentiator
– the Compelling Consumer Experience – is
poised to have the same transformational effect on
a number of industries and businesses.
Definition of Consumer Experience
Consumer Experience means different things from different
perspectives. A good workable definition is: Consumer
Experience is the sum total of the interactions that
a customer has with a company’s products, people,
and processes. It begins from the moment when customers
see an advertisement to the moment when they accept
delivery of a product - and beyond.
Let’s take a product – say a mid-range luxury
car. It looks good, has stable performance features,
is priced competitively, & has a great after-sales
service. The problem is many such competing cars are
available. Too many mid-range luxury cars are available
– all with equivalent or better features, priced
similarly, and with equally good service. Consumers
have more choices than ever, higher expectations than
ever, and more marketers competing for their attention
than ever. So how do you break through all of the
clutter and win over the attention of Consumers suffering
from sensory overload of all your competitors? By
creating experiences that are so distinctive and compelling
that they stand out in a crowded market.
It’s the totality of the consumers’ experiences
with the car: visiting the site to garner the first
details of the car, going for a test-drive, the paperwork
for the car loan, the day you get the keys of the
car, the moment the car gives problem the first time.
The Consumer experience is the sum total of each of
these interactions.
The US carmakers are no longer in the car business;
they are in the business of getting people to places.
They not only provide safe & reliable transportation,
but with Global Positioning System (GPS) & sophisticated
telematics systems, car-manufacturers provide access
to entertainment, shopping, pin-pointed direction-finding
et al. The automobile ends up in becoming a real browser
on wheels. The car industry becomes a service industry
whose job is to fulfill all the demands of the Consumer
whenever she enters the vehicle.
These changing demands from industries, brought about
by technology – particularly the Internet - leads
to the premise that Marketing has changed, with a
personalized Consumer Experience being at the heart
of it.
The Changing 4Ps of Marketing with Consumer Experience
occupying centerstage
Neither the laws of nature nor the laws of marketing
have been revoked by the advent of the Internet based
economy. But the transformed 4Ps do take a different
starting point. The Internet has changed the concept
of Place, Product, Promotion, & Price as we knew
them. Place has transformed into Pervasiveness, Promotion
focuses on personalized Relationship building, Price
gives way to Value, and Product expands to become
Offer & Experience. These new fundamentals give
a new spin to the ways in which we approach marketing:
we move from a company-centric view to a consumer-centric
view. They orient your thinking from the outside in,
rather than the traditional internal perspective where
the company makes the decisions and attempts to convince
enough prospects to buy it.
Place: Place traditionally referred to distribution
channels. Locking up a distribution agreement with
selected channels used to be a competitive advantage.
Not any longer; the Internet has dramatically increased
the number of suppliers available. Location of the
market – the place where the buyer & sellers
meet is pervasive and has gone beyond the time-space
limits.
Promotion: Promotion used to center around
the concept of mass marketing, reach, and frequency,
with no direct information-capture or relation to
the prospect. The Internet has made this information
measurable and available. As a result, promotions
today is about building relationship – using
this customer information made available to build
brand and customer satisfaction and capture lifetime
value on a one-to-one basis. Promotion and Brand-building
have coalesced into one.
Price: The increased access to more suppliers of a
product, price-robots searching through the Web for
the best price, in combination with loss leaders,
has created significant additional competition for
price-warriors. Differentiation now needs to be based
on value, not price.
Product: The concept of product as an element
of marketing has also evolved. Customers design their
own computers with Dell’s online configurator,
create their own dolls with Mattel’s My Design
Barbie and their own financial portfolio with Schwab’s
mutual fund evaluator. Nokia allows color selection
and faceplate choices, implementing mass customizing
of its product. Rather than the product per se, it
is the total offer made, the total experience in purchasing
and consuming the product, and the value-added services
that come alongwith – that is the differentiator. |
|
|
