According to recent studies by Twilio and Nielsen, consumers are curating their shopping experiences according to their in-the-moment demands—convenience and choice. Retailers who want to achieve customer loyalty amid the uncertainty of 2023 will have to do the same.
Consumers are looking at shopping and the economy as a whole. According to a Nielsen study, 81 percent of US consumers are reevaluating their priorities or new priorities concerning how they shop. Personalized shopping experiences top the list. As a result, consumers are taking more control over their shopping journeys.
According to survey data from Mckinsey, consumers learned how to curate their shopping experiences during the early days of the pandemic, choosing shopping channels and brands that offered the most value for their time and money. Seventy-five percent of consumers found new brands, stores, or websites to rely on at the start of the pandemic. Moreover, a majority—60 percent—anticipate that they will keep shopping with those new merchants when the health crisis ends. But consumers are doing much more than looking for new brands or using multiple shopping channels to get the prices and value they want. Instead, they now wish retailers to intuit their needs and offer them the same kind of personalized shopping journeys that they’ve been creating for themselves.
Personalize It (Just Don’t Ask Me How)
According to the Twilio report, 49 percent of consumers would become repeat customers if merchants offered personalized shopping experiences. Yet, only 40 percent said they trusted brands with their data and believed the company would use it responsibly. That means retailers must either intuit customer needs or hope to induce them to share their preferences for shopping experiences. But even that may be a challenge, since only 47 percent of companies surveyed can personalize communications, based on consumer behavior, in real-time. Moreover, the lack of personalization is more than an inconvenience for consumers. According to the report, 62 percent of shoppers surveyed said a retailer would lose their loyalty if they encountered an ”un-personalized” shopping experience.
Consumers Spend More When Shopping Experiences Are Personalized
The value of personalization is evident for retailers, 80 percent of whom state consumers spend 34 percent more on average when their shopping experiences are personalized. But finding out what consumers want when only a minority trust retailer with their data is a challenge.
What It Means For Marketers:
According to Twilio, marketers need to hone in on first-party data to gain insights into customer preferences and develop intuitive shopping experiences.
“Due to regulatory changes and subsequent moves from tech giants like Apple and Google businesses are facing a “now or never” moment to build a strategy for collecting, managing, using, and protecting first-party consumer data in a responsible way,” the report reads.
Read the full report.
