Digitaal heeft van alles op z’n kop gegooid, ook voor merkbouwers. Dus stellen allerlei mensen dat allerlei zaken rond merkbouwen veranderen. Daar heb ik enthousiast aan meegedaan :).
Maar… in hoeverre is dat allemaal waar? In hoeverre blijven mensen gewoon mensen? En in hoeverre maken deze mensen nog gewoon op dezelfde wijze keuzes, net als vroeger?
Byron Sharp baarde veel opzien met de herontdekking van het oude spreekwoord “bekend maakt bemind”. Gelden deze oeroude wetten ook nog in de digitale wereld van Alexa, Picnic en Instagram?
Dat onderzochten house51 en Newsworks. Het resultaat is een onderzoek dat je aandacht verdient: “Mental availability in the digital age”.
Leer van deze interessante inzichten.
Vanmiddag heb ik het onderzoek doorgespit. Het resultaat van mijn onderstrepingen heb ik voor je op een rijtje gezet:
While the places we shop are changing, people’s underlying psychology and basic needs and motivations have not changed.
Our research finds that consumers have entered into a very simple contract with online shopping. They offset greater risk for superior convenience.
The relative riskiness of the transaction, the potential loss of control and autonomy, and the desire to make the very most of the purchase, makes consumers even more risk averse and brand dependent. The right kind of mental availability is crucial in providing reassurance.
Romaniuk and Sharp argue that brand loyalty is stronger in online shopping. Our findings are consistent with their predictions. When shopping online, people are more likely to have a brand or retailer in mind, only buy from brands and retailers they know or “brands and retailers I have used before”.
Before people enter the fray, it is essential to brands that they have the opportunity to register on people’s mental radar in environments that get people’s attention and seem knowledgeable, considered and up to date.
The online situation offers often poorer not better support for decision-making. It lacks sensory cues (sight, sound, touch, smell) and human contact. Furthermore, the choice architecture of online technology creates unintended consequences.
Brands are a key way of dealing with the choice overload (…) Brand associations play a key role as a decision shortcut that reduces the list to a manageable level and gets them ‘over the line’ in making a final decision.
Mental availability matters, even online – the online environment evens out physical availability across brands. But mental availability is the key to “overcoming the tendency to loyalty online”.
Brand loyalty is higher online [because] online platforms offer saveable shopping lists and recommendations.
Crucially memory structures are built in a variety of serendipitous ways as we go about our daily lives. It follows that marketers must ensure their brands are encountered in diverse contexts if they are to maximise relevant associations and retrieval.
Online personalisation and hyper-targeting seem to be at odds with this. The online environment has the potential to create filter bubbles that narrow the range of brand experience.
This highlights a further advantage of bricks and mortar shopping. It remains a key channel for serendipitous experiences, brand discovery and the creation of rich memory structures and enhanced mental availability.
Lees het hele rapport.
Hier kun je het onderzoek tot je nemen. Zowel in de vorm van een uitgebreid verslag en een korte presentatie.
