Global consumer study by IBM finds new technology-enabled innovations play a pivotal role in reshaping sales and marketing processes

Global consumer study by IBM finds new technology-enabled innovations play a pivotal role in reshaping sales and marketing processes

Details of a global survey of consumers into the role of technology in engaging and building trust with consumers have revealed a desire to interact with retailers using a growing number of technologies.

IBM’s Institute of Business Value, in conjunction with the Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Italy, surveyed over 28,500 consumers from 15 countries around the world, including 1,850 in the UK.

It found that 16% of consumers in the UK alone were happy to use three or more technologies to shop and browse retailer offerings. These included e-commerce and m-commerce websites, social networks and videos, TVs and electronic games.

Technology-driven shopping experiences

When it came to expectations of technology-driven experiences, nearly half (48%) of all respondents believe websites saved time and were a convenient way to shop; while 82% of UK consumers believed social networks saved time shopping and 63% wanted to use mobile devices as a way of carrying out comparative shopping research, rising to 67% wanting to use their devices at check out. Even 78% said they wanted to use TV channels to identify and research new products.

The research, carried out as part of IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative, was designed to position the IT firm to help retailers move away from traditional category management merchandising to embrace the concept of a customer-driven strategy that can respond more quickly to changing demands and build brand trust.

Chris Withers, Smarter Commerce lead for IBM UK and Ireland, spoke to Retail Technology at Retail Business Technology Expo last week about the research. “We wanted to build a profile on what information consumers were willing to share and which brands they trust,” he said. “We also looked at what drives advocacy and learned that brand trust becomes very important. By becoming more trusted, retailers can develop a deeper level of customer engagement, which has a direct correlation to advocacy and spend.”

Managing exponential data proliferation

Part of the problem is managing the vast amounts of unstructured data, like those from diverse communications platforms including social networks, which retailers can now use to measure sentiment and gain insight into how trusted a brand is in comparison to its competitors, Withers added. The research analysed commentary filtered by categories of social conversations identified by select word concepts, for example. “IBM Smarter Commerce is designed to help retailers understand who their most profitable customers are and how they can design software solutions to manage their data in such a way as to put their customers at the heart of their business,” he said.

Withers reported that the majority of consumers emerged as also willing to share personal information. “But only in exchange for something relevant to them,” Withers added. “This represents a particular opportunity for retailers to win customers over with relevant promotions and information. But email also came off particularly badly in terms of forms of communication, demonstrating a decline in the effectiveness of mass media as influencer – especially if it’s not personalised or relevant.”

He urged retailers to continuously measure brand sentiment in comparison with the competition across every technology-enabled customer touchpoint, in order to adjust customer strategies in response over time, identify top influencers and their preferred channels of discussion and break into influential new communities. In this way, Withers said retailers could optimise marketing expense to target segments, match real customer demand to inventory across their value chains, and empower sales and service staff to allow the customer to be king.