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Consumer behavior of late reflects a change in how people consume and buy products and services. Brands who recognize the shifting landscape and adapt to meet the habits and needs of customers are the brands who will both come out on top and win loyalty.
The average business roadmap is five years old – think of how much has changed in five years – and how (ir)relevant those maps are while navigating modern times.
Companies need to do more than message around agility; they need to truly transform in order to remain relevant in the future.
A reshaped consumer landscape: Customer behavior stats
Perhaps the biggest thing brands can do now is to get used to adapting – that’s the new business model.
Some fascinating consumer behaviors have emerged since the pandemic began, including:
- 46% of consumers shopped only online during the 2021 holiday season
- 67% of consumers say their online shopping has increased since 2020
- User-generated content (UGC) is 8.7 times more impactful than influencer content
- Social commerce is on the rise with the next era of purchasers – 46% of Gen Z uses TikTok to get information about purchases or brands, while 69% use Instagram
Click into the power of UGC marketing on TikTok
User-generated content can be gold for marketing. Find out how brands can leverage the hot social media platform to engage buyers.
Like many whose professional lives were upended by COVID, Colleen Fahey Rush, Chief Research Officer and Executive Vice President at Paramount, experienced a shift – not only in her work responsibilities – but in connecting with the audience she serves as well.
Her team’s portfolio at Paramount includes linear networks like CBS; cable networks like Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, and Comedy Central; and a movie studio called Paramount Pictures.
Using consumer analytics and research, her team at Paramount gleaned important information about how, what, and why their audience was consuming content, including:
- Who their audience is, and what makes them tick
- Their motivations and needs
- How they’d like to prefer to consume content, and what kinds of content they like
In paying attention to the critical data, her team is able to make better business decisions around what kind of content to create so that customers will want to subscribe to their streaming services, purchase movie tickets, and stay engaged with their brand.
Personalization: It’s not magic.
It’s method.
Find out who does it best HERE.
Adjusting to customers adjusting: How brands are adapting to consumer behavior
With business models constantly evolving, it’s pretty obvious that the make-up of teams needed to run an agile company are evolving, too. Some hiring trends that Fahey-Rush noted include:
- Research has a seat at the strategy table to help inform teams on what the data means
- Leaders need to exhibit collaboration, adaptability, be open minded, empathetic, and authentic
- Data engineering and computer science experience are more and more important
- Diversity is a requirement, as audiences are diverse, too
While you might think the above are unicorns in the business world, Fahey-Rush said that it’s actually been fairly simple to find people to fit these roles – agility and authenticity seem to be baked in to this next generation of employees, too.
