Who are the new consumers?

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There’s a new consumer emerging as part of the interaction field: the interactive participant. Just as farmers make up the nucleus of John Deere’s interaction field (as we discussed in our earlier newsletter ), the interactive consumer should be viewed as an essential part of new business models. It’s important to state that the new consumer is not just code for millennial, although the new interaction field consumer does have characteristics of the millennial buyer.?

My daughter, Sara (who happens to be a millennial), is a great example. She has a healthy skepticism toward commerce and capitalism, corporate motives, marketing strategies, and promotional tricks. But that does not mean that Sara doesn’t pay close attention to the marketplace. She does. She expects a lot from everything she buys and uses, and her expectations rise quickly as new technologies and innovations come on the market.?

New consumers like Sara have been characterized as self-centered, screen obsessed, distracted, fickle, shallow, mercurial, hard to please, impatient, argumentative, self-righteous, and addicted to social media. In my view, these characteristics are positive, not negative, and they describe most consumers today, not just those of the millennial generation. What looks like a short attention span is actually an incredibly focused and informed deployment of time and energy. What appears to be an addiction to social media is a calculated engagement with defined groups or sources to get the job of shopping done. What looks like new consumer distraction and disloyalty is largely a response to the enormous range of choices in the market today.?

This type of consumer has sometimes been called a prosumer—a professional at the art and practice of buying, a highly skilled and confident purchaser.?

So how do businesses serve the new consumer?

In order to participate in a well-developed interaction field model, businesses need to:?

1. Anticipate consumer needs in a world in which those needs are constantly evolving.?

There’s no stopping consumer expectations. As more companies develop the interaction field model, the new consumers will expect more and be ready to genuinely engage, participate, be heard, and access solutions that more perfectly solve their problems and fit with their social vision.?

New consumer attitudes and habits have affected the entire buying population as consumer expectations have risen rapidly and people demand the highest level of everything: better service, easier checkout, faster delivery, and less hassle.

For example, Prime shoppers (like me) expect similarly speedy and competent shipping services from other vendors, whether or not such a promise is made. Since I can chat online with a customer service rep for any issues I have with my TV or Internet services, I expect the same from the maker of my washing machine, the German company Miele. But then I discover I can’t chat with Miele reps online; I have to make a phone call to their service center. When I do that, I learn that I need a house visit from a service guy and the first available appointment is two weeks from now. This is not promising for a competitive interaction field business.?

2. Find ways to make consumers co-creators or co-producers of value.

While businesses like Blue Apron, Amazon, and Uber collect data from people like Sara to improve their operations and tailor their offerings, they expect more from the consumer: they want us to rate their service, leave reviews and personalized comments, and know if we would recommend their offering to a friend.?

Sara has largely given up doing any of those things because doing so adds nothing to her life or experience, and none of her suggestions seem to end up as improvements to the services. Thus the whole game is meaningless. Interaction field companies know how to activate consumers as part of their nucleus.?

3. Serve multiple new, adjacent needs.

The interaction field won’t be a solution or platform built by a single company. Instead, it will be?a mash-up of many different companies, platforms, and ecosystem participants. It will be an interaction field model either built from scratch or orchestrated by the interaction field company. It will be enormously capable. It will take into account the daily context of consumers, such as traffic status and weather conditions. It will be simple and holistic: rather than have twelve apps, one for each service, I will be able to get a ride of some kind with one click and one charge.??

How do we get there?

The hypothetical interaction field company will not stand still. It will engage with its consumers in a virtuous cycle, embedding itself more and more deeply into the lives of consumers.?

The solution needs to accurately predict the best options for consumer mobility, and for all participants offering mobility solutions, anytime and anywhere.

We are not there yet. And we won’t get there unless we empower participants.?

Want to learn more?

Check out my book, The Interaction Field : The Revolutionary New Way to Create Shared Value for Businesses, Customers, and Society.

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