Consumer trends:
As numbers from the Office of National Statistics can reveal, the COVID-19 pandemic really did accelerate the e-transition of consuming habits, with brick-and-mortar retail giving way to online purchasing. As of December 2021, over 27% of retail transactions were performed online with numbers reaching 37% during lockdown, earlier that same year. With younger consumers most likely to buy online, this suggests that these current trends do not even scratch the surface of what the future holds.
For businesses that market consumer goods and services, this has been a major concern. Business leaders have been compelled to rethink their entire business models, restructure supply chains to suit home dispatching, and also develop online platforms capable of delivering a good customer experience. But marketing, advertising and customer retention are still concerns.
Customer loyalty, Marketing and Advertising
Customer loyalty was once rooted in the human dynamics of customer service. In the digital universe this has ceased to be the case, causing sales and marketing executives to experience great uncertainty when it comes to customer retention.
Just think that 80% of the future profit of your company will derive from just a fifth of your loyal customers.
It is then essential that you understand the new paradigms of customer retention to guarantee success in your digital transition. Limiting your company to elementary strategies such as email marketing will not win hearts with customers, and business leaders should be looking at developing or integrating customer loyalty software solutions. The younger generation just loves rewards or loyalty points when they make purchases, share content, or recommend a product or service bolstering your amount of returning consumers and potentially widening your customer base.
Whilst some of these loyalty solutions will even help you grow your market share, their main focus is on retention. Retention is vital to sustaining profits, but marketing and advertising strategies are the best plan of attack to acquire new business. With this in mind, College Green Group has a series of courses designed to help businesses promote their brand, harness opportunities to further their market intelligence, whilst creating customer loyalty through social media tools and techniques.
Sustainability as the defining solution for governments, consumers and businesses.
It is not only the practical way in which people are consuming products and services that is changing. Consumers are also becoming more selective about the products and companies they choose to buy from and much of it comes down to sustainability.
Deloitte’s research in the UK reported that in 2021, 61% of consumers in the UK cut back on their usage of single use plastics, 39% reduced their consumption of new products and goods, and most importantly 34% confessed that they chose brands that have environmentally sustainable practices and values.
The rise of ecological politics captures this phenomena, in which younger generation consumers want to buy products that are developed sustainably from companies that care about the environment. As the movement for climate action gains momentum, companies have more than a moral duty to protect the environment, as consumers become increasingly carbon sensitive, they have a financial interest in doing so.
The UK became the world’s first major economy to set a target of being net zero by 2050. Most countries followed suit and in the EU, the US and across the developed world, companies will have increased regulatory pressures to become more socially and environmentally sustainable. A version of the EU’s green and social taxonomies, created to measure targets set by governments, will be replicated and adapted by most countries in years to come.
Big companies are setting up ESG teams to develop strategies that protect the environment and safeguard the interests of stakeholders by appealing to the environmental thirst that is growing amongst consumers.
At College Green Group we are at the forefront of ESG thinking. We work with 14 companies such as KPMG, Insig AI and Severn Trent to promote deliberation between business and political leaders on what the future of ESG holds, tackling leading issues such as reducing carbon emissions and reaching net zero emissions.
Please find below links to courses you will find useful:
