Editor’s note: Nate Cusick is a business and marketing development representative at market research tech company Discuss.io, Seattle. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared under the title, “How Gen Z is changing market research.”
Today's consumers are incredibly savvy. They expect to have a seamless omni-channel experience everywhere they shop: fashion, retail, grocery, etc. Not only do they demand the best shopping experience from brands, they also want to feel authenticity in your messaging. What does your brand stand for? Are you inclusive? What are you doing to better the lives of your consumers and your employees?
Brands also have to be organic when developing and expressing their voice. Your consumer (especially Gen Z) can tell right away if your brand is capitalizing on a hot political issue or social cause. Instead, work with your marketing team to authentically incorporate your brand's core values into marketing strategies. Change up the messaging across multiple social platforms and talk about what you and the brand is truly passionate about.
The acceleration of technology advances, particularly in AI, AR and VR, continue to push brands toward finding creative ways to capture the ever-shortening attention spans of their youngest consumers. Given the fact that Gen Z will be the largest buying segment by 2020, we will continue to see more brands align their product development and messaging strategies with what young consumers want to see. There's no denying it, Gen Z has the ability to single-handedly kill off your brand. I chatted with Rachael Schwartz to get a better idea of what brands can do to avoid a tragic death (*cough* retail apocalypse anyone?). Rachael shared her insights on what brands can do to become more agile in their approach when researching and marketing to this next wave of consumers.
Schwartz is a senior innovation and strategy executive. She recently left Keurig Green Mountain, where she was the VP of product management and innovation.
Nate Cusick: Tell me about some of the changes you have witnessed in the market research/marketing space over the past few years?
Rachael Schwartz: There has been a growing acceptance across companies of design thinking practices, not just in early innovation but in traditional product development practices. As part of this, understanding the consumer, bringing them into the design process, having them react to early prototypes, etc., become part of the market research process. Large quantitative studies are more and more likely to be reserved for later on in the product development process to make nuanced decisions or support volumetrics – pricing and quantity decisions.
Why does consumer empathy matter?
Consumer empathy is important across all groups but it is particularly relevant when we talk about Gen Z consumers. Gen Z consumers are very skeptical of brands and marketing messages. Authenticity is critical in getting through to Gen Z. If your brand or marketing message does not feel authentic, they will reject it.
However, in order to be authentic, the brand and product actually have to address the consumer's needs. Therefore, it is important to use consumer empathy to really understand the consumer and develop a product with that consumer in mind.
What are some challenges brands face when trying to understand the consumer on a personal level?
It is often difficult to differentiate between the needs or perspective of an individual consumer and that of a segment of consumers. A common mistake that product developers make is to incorrectly extrapolate findings from qualitative research with a small group of consumers to a whole segment, failing to identify which needs and perspectives are unique to the individual being interviewed and which are common across the segment. Extrapolation of insights from qualitative research is an art and a skill that consumer insights professionals and product developers learn and build over time.
How does today’s consumer differ from the consumer a decade ago?
Traditionally, for a brand to grow, it needed awareness and distribution. This old system favored large established companies with deep pockets and relationships. Today, brands can get awareness inexpensively through highly targeted digital marketing and can get distribution inexpensively and easily through online retailers. As a result of this greater brand exposure consumers are less brand loyal and expect their brands to be more targeted and relevant to them. Both large and small brands need to identify microsegments of consumers and use consumer data to develop products and direct messages to those groups. Also, they need to use digital marketing to send the right message to the consumer at the time that they are most receptive to that message.
How have technology advances, specifically AI, affected how brands think about marketing strategies?
Brands are just starting to discover how to effectively use AI in their marketing strategies. AI has been used in refining effective messaging – continuous A/B testing – when micro-targeting consumers. It’s been used to create more personalized products or recommendations – think Spotify or Netflix. It's been used in chat boxes to support sales or customer service activities. In all these cases, AI can help brands create a more relevant, personalized product and communicate with consumers in a more relevant way.
Social media arguably is the most effective way to interact with consumers, as this is where they are the most vocal. What are some examples of things brands can do to develop an authentic social media presence?
It's important for brands to establish their voice or tone – sweet, silly, snarky, witty, etc. – that fits within the brand image and resonates with the target consumer. Then they need to unleash their social media team to be active, relevant and responsive on social media. They do this by training the team on that tone and giving them strict boundaries that fit within the brand and company image, for example boundaries around political and social comments. A team posting or tweeting frequently with a consistent voice that resonates with the brand will come across as an authentic social media presence. Brands fall flat when their messages sound like marketing messages, sound very stiff or sound like they are coming from many different people. A great example of an effective and authentic social media presence is Merriam-Webster's Twitter posts. They are fun and shareable but tied into the product.