Consumer Behaviour.  When and how to engage with the customer

Have brands thought about whether the time of day has any impact on consumer’s shopping behaviour? In the work from home era, people’s timings of work, play, eating, socialising, shopping et al have undergone a radical changet. The huge shift to digital has meant that consumers could be window shopping at 5 am, or buying stuff at midnight — are the brands available at that time to engage with the consumer?

Given that what people are doing when has become so unpredictable, it is imperative for brands to study their consumers’ lives anew. Especially as hobby courses, fitness products, entertainment and food are vying for the same mind space, time and purse strings of the consumers. Brands no longer only compete against brands in their own space, but against newer categories.

Diving deeper

Market research firm Market Xcel’s new study — Consumer Brand Connect — is set on these premises. It tries to analyse consumption patterns during different times of the day and by different categories.

As marketing consultant Rama Bijapurkar writes in the report, “Marketers must think of relearning about consumer lives more broadly in terms of understanding “a day in the life of a...” whether you are a bank or a car company or a food company, it helps to know how people’s days are structured nowadays and ask what does it mean for my business, strategically and marketing operations wise.

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Also, as Ashwani Arora, Executive Director of Market Xcel explains, the needs of the emerging consumer base are different. “They are constrained on time and eventually engage more in the scarce time they have to engage with the brands. The challenge for brands is more towards initial onboarding. The consumer is inclined towards parameters that contribute to the overall experience and not just the product quality.”

For the study, Market Xcel studied 8,750 people in the age group 18-55 years living in the top 25 Indian cities, covering all four regions of the country. It looked at the day of a home-maker, the day of a student, the day of a working professional — studying which were the touchpoints and time zones in which brands intersected with their day.

It also studied 1,000 brands, looking closely at the top 100, developing a unique model to rank the brands.

It placed the brands into categories and measured their impact across six distinct segments :

1. Populous megapolis — brands with high impact and high brand population.

2. Transformational market — brands with medium impact and medium brand population.

3. Overcrowded megapolis — brands with medium impact and high brand population.

4. Capacious megapolis — this lists high impact and medium brand population.

5. Expand and accelerate — brands in categories that need to increase their relevance.

6. Renew and refresh — low impact and low brand population.

Findings and insights

● Personal care brands are at a peak in the morning, Colgate, Lifebuoy and Close Up have emerged as the key morning brands. Food tech/delivery brands dominate the afternoon and night time, e-commerce brands like Big Basket dominate the afternoon period and OTT brands dominate the night time.

● ITC’s Aashirvaad's association with evening and night indicates a change in food consumption pattern of Indians as roti/pancake is largely being prepared during night.

● Haldiram's dominance in the evening and at night shows India's preferred snack timing.

● When it comes to categories, food (CPG), personal care, mobile phones, e-commerce and hair care were the top five in recall.

● The most successful brands are those that have demonstrated an intimate understanding of the Digi Gen — the new digitally savvy, unforgiving consumer who shows a new kind of need — the need for immediacy, intimacy, personalisation , on-demand and always on.

● Collaborations matter. Brands that have collaborated better with the digital eco-system (e.g., Telcos with OTT, DTH, eComm, and other relevant surround apps) in order to cater to the compelling need of the DigiGen, even if it poses competition, seem to mean more to consumers.

● Hygiene, home care and laundry brands like Harpic, Surf Excel and Godrej products are relevant throughout the day against the conventional belief that they matter only at a certain time.

Not surprisingly, new age digital brands dominate the top 10 rankings in the report. These include Airtel, Jio, Amazon, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Netflix and You Tube. However, the top 10 also had incumbents like Amul and Colgate, which managed to stay relevant in consumers’ lives.

For veteran marketer Lloyd Mathias, a key takeaway from the report was the sudden emergence of millennials as key influencers with respect to the choice of brands as digital became the primary medium. “Also, with ‘super apps’ that sell a wide variety of goods and services, the concept of brand loyalty underwent a sea change,” he points out.

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