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Winning Brands Habitually Please Consumers
Jim Katzaman
April 22, 2019·9 min read
Consumer habits evolve over the years. That can be a matter of changing tastes, emerging technology and a host of other factors. To succeed, entrepreneurs have to anticipate and adapt to economic trends so they can stay ahead of competitors.
Francis Kihara studies consumer habits as “a passionate marketer with interests in building and promoting brands.” His Entridea blog “is all about entrepreneurship and idea generation,” which he discussed during an Africa Tweet Chat.
He cited an assortment of tools brands can use to monitor consumer habits.
“First, we start the conversation by understanding what consumer behaviors and habits are,” Kihara said. “Consumer behavior is simply the buying habits and patterns reflected by an individual, group or a given society.
“Brands need to understand consumer habits, triggers, and preferences,” he said. “This can only be understood through the use of data, but how is that data collected? It's through monitoring tools.”
Kihara explained that technological and traditional tools fall into several groups:
“There is a shift to healthier products,” he said. “People are shifting to sugar-free, fortified foods in a bid to avoid New Age ailments such as diabetes, obesity, and cancer.”
Kihara pointed to Coca-Cola as an example of a company shifting to zero-sugar products and energy boosts.
“There is great interest in brands that take keen interest of societal needs, such as environmentally friendly, great corporate social responsibility activities and contributing to societal charities,” he said. “Marketing concepts have shifted from a product concept to what is now a community and societal conscious concepts of marketing.
“This means consumers are buying that one product that resonates with their values and cultures,” Kihara said. “Socially responsible brands win.”
With the rise in consumer-to-consumer referrals and recruitments, millennials use their peers as their main influence.
“The emergence of real-time consumption and information access have given consumers technology to get all the information they need about products without having to visit outlets,” Kihara said. “Google is a great disruption in this.”
He dug deeper into the supremacy of reviews.
"When was the last time you downloaded an app or booked for a hotel?” Kihara said. “I can bet you used reviews to make your decisions.”
Not all reviews are equal, to which Kihara gave reasons why consumers read reviews:
“Again, Coca-Cola executes one of the best merchandising standards globally that helps capture the consumer,” he said.
Kihara defines brand values as the premium that accrues to a brand from customers willing to pay extra for it and have a repeated purchase.
“Your brand values will help you capture the three P’s of your brand: proposition, personality, and purpose,” he said. “Without values to guide you, your brand will seem like just any other business. It is what differentiates a brand from others in the same sea.”
He listed the brand values that influence consumer purchasing habits:
“Stories are what people remember,” Kihara said. “Even when they forget names and faces, they rarely forget the story and how it made them feel. Remember Coca-Cola's Share a Coke, Share a Feeling campaign.
“People relate to stories,” he said. “They see bits of themselves in your protagonist. They associate the antagonist and conflict with the problems in their own lives. They share in the joy and reward when the main characters finally achieve their goals.”
After all the drama, there has to be a payoff.
“Stories reveal how the product is beneficial to customers, what it intends to solve and its quality,” Kihara said. “Experience redefined, such as in the Airbnb story.”
Social media can help brands connect with consumers, but it’s not the total solution.
“In developing economies, more than 360 million people came online for the first time in 2018,” Kihara said. “That is around 5 percent of the world community.
“We now have more than half of the world population connected to the internet,” he said. “An average internet user spends 6.5 hours a day online. Social media leads by an average 2.25 of those hours.”
Other statistics show there are almost 3.5 billion active social media users or 45 percent of the world’s population. Social media’s 280 million new users in the last year reflect 9 percent growth. Facebook, Google, and YouTube topped Google searches in 2018.
More than 2.27 billion people are on Facebook, 1.9 billion on YouTube and 1 billion on Instagram. There is an average of four comments per user per month.
“With this data, yes, brands should use social media,” Kihara said. “That's where the future lies.”
He proposed these benefits of using social media:
- Social intelligence tools: Integrated social listening software such as Hootsuite, Social Mentions, Sprout Social, KeyHole, SumAll and Hubspot. This also includes search engine analytical tools: Google Analytics, Neil Patel, SEOptimer and Moz Analytics. Social media platform-backed tools: Facebook Mentions, Facebook Insights, Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics, YouTube Analytics, and Instagram Analytics.
- Tools for measuring demographics, media habits, and psychographics: Ipsos Synovate, Tifa Research, Smollan Retail Solutions, Neilson, Deloitte Research, Geopoll, ReelForge, and Consumer Insights.
- Tracking conversations: Cision and SM2.
- Purchase decisions and consumer retail outlets behaviors: Till-Data Analysis, WiFi tracking tools, EFT data available.
“There is a shift to healthier products,” he said. “People are shifting to sugar-free, fortified foods in a bid to avoid New Age ailments such as diabetes, obesity, and cancer.”
Kihara pointed to Coca-Cola as an example of a company shifting to zero-sugar products and energy boosts.
“There is great interest in brands that take keen interest of societal needs, such as environmentally friendly, great corporate social responsibility activities and contributing to societal charities,” he said. “Marketing concepts have shifted from a product concept to what is now a community and societal conscious concepts of marketing.
“This means consumers are buying that one product that resonates with their values and cultures,” Kihara said. “Socially responsible brands win.”
With the rise in consumer-to-consumer referrals and recruitments, millennials use their peers as their main influence.
“The emergence of real-time consumption and information access have given consumers technology to get all the information they need about products without having to visit outlets,” Kihara said. “Google is a great disruption in this.”
He dug deeper into the supremacy of reviews.
"When was the last time you downloaded an app or booked for a hotel?” Kihara said. “I can bet you used reviews to make your decisions.”
Not all reviews are equal, to which Kihara gave reasons why consumers read reviews:
- To see what others are saying.
- To establish trust with a business.
- To avoid bad products and service.
- To gain transparency from businesses.
“Again, Coca-Cola executes one of the best merchandising standards globally that helps capture the consumer,” he said.
Kihara defines brand values as the premium that accrues to a brand from customers willing to pay extra for it and have a repeated purchase.
“Your brand values will help you capture the three P’s of your brand: proposition, personality, and purpose,” he said. “Without values to guide you, your brand will seem like just any other business. It is what differentiates a brand from others in the same sea.”
He listed the brand values that influence consumer purchasing habits:
- Love.
- Social responsibility.
- Quality.
- Happiness -- best reflected by Coca-Cola brand’s "Share a Feeling.”
- Customer supremacy through customer service and satisfaction.
- Integrity.
- Freshness.
- Innovation.
- Sustainability.
- Charity.
- Promise for a better environment and empowered society.
- By making viewers feel a sense of internal control.
- Reduced information overload. When you know that the content being displayed on a social media site is tailored to you, it provides a more manageable framework for engagement compared to when posts are generalized.
- Something special occurs when people hear their own name. It triggers brain activation.
- It’s the best way to complete the AIDA model of attention, interest, desire and action.
- A brand story can increase positive brand responses and ultimately make consumers more willing to purchase the brand's products in low-involvement categories.
- Decrease negative brand associations.
- Help in positive brand perception in the mind of consumers.
- Building customers’ engagement.
- Help in sharing brand values by showing the uniqueness of a product: Help answer the "Who are you?"
“Stories are what people remember,” Kihara said. “Even when they forget names and faces, they rarely forget the story and how it made them feel. Remember Coca-Cola's Share a Coke, Share a Feeling campaign.
“People relate to stories,” he said. “They see bits of themselves in your protagonist. They associate the antagonist and conflict with the problems in their own lives. They share in the joy and reward when the main characters finally achieve their goals.”
After all the drama, there has to be a payoff.
“Stories reveal how the product is beneficial to customers, what it intends to solve and its quality,” Kihara said. “Experience redefined, such as in the Airbnb story.”
Social media can help brands connect with consumers, but it’s not the total solution.
“In developing economies, more than 360 million people came online for the first time in 2018,” Kihara said. “That is around 5 percent of the world community.
“We now have more than half of the world population connected to the internet,” he said. “An average internet user spends 6.5 hours a day online. Social media leads by an average 2.25 of those hours.”
Other statistics show there are almost 3.5 billion active social media users or 45 percent of the world’s population. Social media’s 280 million new users in the last year reflect 9 percent growth. Facebook, Google, and YouTube topped Google searches in 2018.
More than 2.27 billion people are on Facebook, 1.9 billion on YouTube and 1 billion on Instagram. There is an average of four comments per user per month.
“With this data, yes, brands should use social media,” Kihara said. “That's where the future lies.”
He proposed these benefits of using social media:
- Improved search engine rankings.
- Higher conversion rates.
- Better customer satisfaction.
- Improved brand loyalty.
- Increased brand awareness.
- More inbound traffic.
- More brand authority.
- Gain in marketplace insights.
- Less cost.
- Brand thought leadership.
- Focusing on your product or service more than your audience.
- Not involving your audience.
- Not telling stories.
- Using the same tone and style in different social media platforms.
- Not paying attention to analytics. They matter.
Jim Katzaman
Jim Katzaman is a manager at Largo Financial Services. A writer by trade, he graduated from Lebanon Valley College, Pennsylvania, with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He enlisted in the Air Force and served for 25 years in public affairs – better known in the civilian world as public relations. He also earned an Associate’s Degree in Applied Science in Public Affairs. Since retiring, he has been a consultant and in the federal General Service as a public affairs specialist. He also acquired life and health insurance licenses, which resulted in his present affiliation with Largo Financial Services. In addition to expertise in financial affairs, he gathers the majority of his story content from Twitter chats. This has led him to publish about a wide range of topics such as social media, marketing, sexual harassment, workplace trends, productivity and financial management. Medium has named him a top writer in social media.