Introducing the Needs-Adaptive Consumer

WHEN DO CONSUMERS DECIDE TO BUY SOMETHING? Why and how do they shop in the first place? Over the past 20 years, a number of macro shifts have disrupted the retailing industry and changed the way that companies need to think about shoppers. These changes have drastically altered shopping patterns and buying decisions — presenting new opportunities and challenges for marketers to persuade consumers to spend money and encourage repeat purchases. In particular, four categories of emergent change have impacted the shopping landscape:

Knowledge changes. Consumers are more knowledgeable about offerings in the marketplace today, and have convenient and uninterrupted access to a diverse range of information sources about brands and products. This gives them the ability to make more informed decisions. In many cases, consumers may be more well-informed about new products and pricing than the retailers’ own sales personnel.

Lifestyle changes. Not only do new forms of entertainment now compete with shopping as a recreational activity and for spending dollars, consumers’ lives have also become significantly more hectic. Rapid globalization has accelerated information transmission, internationalized consumers’ tastes and preferences, and accentuated the power of social influence in shopping behaviour.

Technological changes. Technological advancements (e.g. the Internet, mobile technologies, social media, shopper-facing technologies) have provided new ways and channels for consumers to shop (e.g. showrooming, webrooming), and for researchers to capture valuable data about how consumers shop.

Structural changes. Product assortments and brand availability have also seen tremendous expansion. Furthermore, the recent surge in omni-channel retailing has fundamentally changed how retailers develop and execute their marketing strategies and how consumers shop, making it necessary for consumers to consider the choice of product, brands and channels simultaneously.

My colleagues and I recently got together to develop a revised framework to serve as a guide for thinking about how consumers shop today. To develop our framework, we established a set of general guiding principles.