What is the Consumer's Contemporary Experience of Shopping and Content?
Akshay Halve
APAC Digital Commerce Marketing @ Colgate-Palmolive | eCommerce marketing & media management
“The consumer isn’t a moron; she’s your wife.” – David Ogilvy
In some earlier articles, having looked at the converge of media & commerce, how media & digital shelf metrics come together, eCommerce content, ratings & reviews and search, pricing & promotion, maybe its time to come back to how all of this is shaping the consumer's contemporary content and shopping experience.
Every day, from the moment we wake up to the second we power down, we're bombarded with brand messages across every conceivable channel. Ads sneak in during our commutes, as we scroll through social media, watch a quick video, or even glance at a digital billboard on the way to work. Screens, feeds, and platforms—all meticulously crafted to capture our attention and tempt us into a buying decision. So the challenge brands face is that no matter how omnipresent they are, breaking through the haze of competing messages is harder than ever.
According to a recent report, the average consumer anywhere in Asia-Pacific sees upwards of 2,000 ads a day, yet few resonate enough to stick. In a world of overstimulation, awareness no longer guarantees attention. Instead, this barrage of ads and media only intensifies what can be called “brand fatigue”—a state where consumers are aware of all the options but indifferent to most of them.
Simply put, the modern consumer is selective. We know when we're being sold to and are increasingly adept at tuning out anything that doesn’t feel directly relevant or valuable.
And it’s not just the frequency of ads but the sheer variety of retail channels available that complicates the experience. From traditional stores and online platforms to rapid quick commerce services and in-app shopping, consumers now (subconsciously) navigate a maze of touch-points themselves. We have access to everything, everywhere, all the time.
So getting that prized attention in this cacophony of messages, stimuli, advertising and multiple retail channels means that that message and its distribution have to be based on the consumer's life. Connected in some form, to our needs and desires, in the right context.
Commercial Choices Based on Needs and Wants
The simple, old, economics classification (of good or services) into needs and wants still has a lot of relevance. Different products, depending on where they land between the category and benefit, may find potential focus retail environments to prioritise. Needs are the essentials—things like groceries, hygiene products, and other household staples. These are the no-frills items that we expect to purchase quickly, efficiently, and without fuss.
Quick commerce has risen to meet these demands, allowing consumers to order basic necessities and receive them within hours, sometimes even minutes. Euromonitor reports that the quick commerce market in Asia Pacific grew by over 30% in 2023 alone, as consumers increasingly prioritise convenience for essentials.
But consumerism isn’t built on needs alone. Wants - those things we desire but don’t necessarily need - play an equally (if not more) significant role in our lives. They could be vacations, luxury items, or indulgences like gourmet foods or high-end skincare products. These desires represent a break from the ordinary and are associated with feelings of well-being, enjoyment, and sometimes a little self-pampering (depending on the person's budget, the 'self pampering' could mean anything from flying first class, to an exorbitantly expensive watch to a high end facial cleanser priced at 5x the category average).
To capture this consumer, brands need to recognise where they fall on the spectrum of needs versus desires. Essentials can focus on speed and convenience, but indulgent items require a more engaging, tailored approach. As such, the pricing & promotions approach, the approach to content and influencers used as well as the retail channels prioritised for a particular products may be different too.
The Omni-Commerce Reality Demands Reducing Friction
If there’s one thing today’s consumer has mastered, it’s the art of piecing together information from everywhere before making a purchase. Omni-commerce—where consumers gather insights from multiple channels, both online and offline—has become the standard. We might see a product on social media, research it on a brand’s website, check prices on an eCommerce platform, look at its ratings, see what other people are writing in its reviews and then ultimately buy it at a nearby store or through an app. This flexibility and channel agnosticism puts control firmly in the consumer’s hands.
领英推荐
This omni-channel world means that the more seamless and integrated the content and shopping experience is made, the more likely it is that the consumer's experience has less friction, and that they actually make the purchase. This doesn’t just mean identical promotions and pricing; it means building trust by providing the same quality of service, information, and experience wherever one engages with the consumer.
Brands that succeed here understand that shopper journeys aren’t linear; they’re fluid, constantly adapting to the consumer’s changing circumstances and preferences. And this means envisaging all of the retail channels catered to and the various forms of media interaction together, to arrive at a structure of things that caters to each potential point in the journey.
Bringing it All Together
To thrive in this landscape, brands must evolve past merely having a presence across channels. They need to create an integrated consumer experience that aligns media messaging and retail interactions, offering a smooth journey from Awareness through Consideration, Purchase, and Loyalty. This isn’t just about showing up but about showing up in a way that feels relevant and responsive to the consumer’s interaction context in that environment.
While ACPL (or AIDA or any other framework) does not work in a linear fashion, it is still a nice conceptual reference point to know what outcomes are needed so that each one is catered to or worked towards in some manner or the other. Putting this in a media and eCommerce or digital shelf perspective can lead to some interesting elements - rather, to some holistically planned elements - across the funnel (the funnel being not just media, but the point of purchase as well).
For instance, building awareness can happen not only through traditional advertising but also through high follower influencers, great eCommerce content and a smart approach to off platform & on platform search. Consideration may be aided not just by niche, high engagement influencers but also through a sound approach to building ratings and reviews on important eCommerce partners. Purchase can be targeted not just with in-store promoters, activations and discounts but also with try&buy programs or exclusive limited time sales online. That is to say, that the levers and associated metrics for each of the 4 outcomes are across multiple channels, and the journey needs to be seen across all of them holistically.
The consumer isn’t a moron; she’s your wife (or husband or spouse or friend or what have you). She is a real person with nuanced needs, taking in information from everywhere with a low tolerance for gimmicks. Understanding this and catering to it across the various moments and points of interaction in her day, can earn a better chance of eventually being bought.
Thank you for reading.
In this 9 article series I try to structure (and share) my thoughts, after some years spent, working across integrated media, brand & e-commerce. Anything expressed here is a personal opinion; neither associated with nor representative of that of any organisation past or present.
The other articles in this series: