Charming the digital consumer:

Priorities for todays marketers

Index
Executive summary 5
Survey findings: Getting to know the digital consumer

- Role of influencersadvocators or antagonists?

- Smartphonesdriving consumer acquisition 11

- Company websitesnot interactive enough for consumers

12

- E-retailersrising role of match makers

14

Accelerating the journey toward digital optimization

16

Conclusion 23

Executive summary:
Getting consumers to say I do
Getting digital consumers to commit to a
long-term relationship is not an easy feat
to accomplish. Digital media is transforming
consumers relationship with a brand through
the stages of brand awareness, consideration,
evaluation, purchase and use.
The highly engaged digital consumers check
out myriad brands using channels beyond an
organizations control or knowledge. According
to the 2012 Accenture Global Consumer Pulse
Research Study, consumers across industries,
on an average, use up to six different channels
for prospecting, with a majority relying on
both digital and traditional channels.1 Digital
consumers want to know a brand better
and spend more time to research about it
before courting or purchasing it. Accenture
research shows that the length of time that
visitors spend on a brands website is the key
determinant of their likelihood to purchase
the product in the store.2 It also revealed that
visitors to consumer packaged goods brand
websites spend 37 percent more on the brand
than nonvisitors in the retail stores.
Even post purchase, questions about loyalty
still remain unanswered. Are these consumers
for life? Or, does continuous information
bombardment, vide digital media, create a
fertile ground for switching? According to

Accenture recently surveyed

600 consumers in India to
understand their behavior
and relationship with a brand
across awareness, acquisition
and service delivery, and
also interviewed marketing
managers to understand
the role of digital in
their organizations.

Accenture research, 88 percent of consumers

in India switch provider, in any industry, due to
poor customer service.1 If left unaddressed, this
could spell disaster for companieswith more
and more consumers switching providers.
On the other hand, if consumers are satisfied
with a brand, they commit to it and advocate
it by participating in social media communities
and talking about their experience online to
influence the buying decision of others.
So, why is it difficult for marketers to sweep
these consumers off their feet? Digital
channel fragmentation and proliferation
make it hard for organizations to reach the
right consumer with the right message at
the right time. Marketers face a plethora of
choices in selecting the right mix of consumer
touchpoints that provide the highest return
on investment (ROI). Many questions need to
be addressed: Should we focus more on social
media? Should we follow one campaign across
traditional as well as digital channels? Will
banner ads based on television and/or print
work better? Are we better off in focusing
our energy on managing the complaint box,
which hosts opinions posted about their brand
by users and opinion makers, and, sometimes,
nonusers too? How much of our marketing
spend should we divert from traditional media
to this new age phenomenon?

Our consumer and marketer survey help

understand the digital consumers behavior
and their relationship with a brand across its
entire life cycle. It highlights the significant
potential of digital channels in building loyalty
while maximizing ROI. The report covers four
key findings:
Role of influencersadvocators
or antagonists?
Smartphonesdriving consumer acquisition
Company websitesnot interactive
enough for consumers
E-retailersrising role of match makers
The report also captures Accentures
frameworkDevelop, Connect and Optimize
to help organizations accelerate their journey
toward digital optimization and get consumers
to say I do.

http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/
Accenture-Global-Consumer-Pulse-Research-Study-2012.pdf

http://www.brandchannel.com/images/papers/534_CPG%20
White%20Paper.pdf

Despite spending more than 13 percent

of their media budget on digital channels
(according to our survey), organizations have
not been able to reach the required level of
dialogue, interaction and engagement with
their consumers. They are still in the trial
and learn stage, deciding the optimum
budget, using digital channels sporadically,
experimenting with different platforms and
tools, and figuring out the correct metrics to
measure their effectiveness. Moreover, their
acquisition and retention strategies fail to
keep pace with the digital consumer, and fall
short of providing an integrated, 360-degree
view of the consumer across channels.
For organizations to get consumers to commit,
they need to deliver a differentiated, yet
relevant, customer experience that will set the
high-performance businesses apart from the
laggards. Mastering the ability to provide such
an experience will drive customer loyalty.

Role of influencers
advocators or antagonists?
Social media and the Internet have connected
consumers, enabling an unprecedented
flow of information among themselves. Our
survey shows that consumers spend an hour
a day online. It also highlights that people
spend more time online to seek information
on brands (45 percent) than socializing or
networking (38 percent).
Facebook is liked the most and 90 percent
of the consumers surveyed have a personal
profile on social networking sites. The average
number of contacts for an individual on
Facebook is 190.3 This might seem surprisingly
low, but it is not if we consider the multiplier
effect. The person with 190 contacts can
actually view comments of his/her entire
network and their network of 190 friends. This
potential to connect with an extended network
of contactswith just one postmakes this
channel so powerful. These immediate and
extended contacts make up the trusted
network of a person, who despite not being
famous or a celebrity, exerts some degree of
influence over them through posts, shares,
likes and dislikes about products and brands.
That he or she is just like the rest of us or
people like us (PLU) is what makes him or her
trustworthy and lends the whole experience
credibility. A survey by The Nielsen Company
shows that 92 percent of consumers trust
recommendations from people they know
while purchasing a new product.4 In this way,
ordinary people become powerful influencers
for a large audience.
What role do influencers play in consumers
commitment journey? Today, when a buyer
contemplates a major purchase, such as an
LED television, a mobile phone or a car, he
or she does not look for a salesperson but
checks product information on the Internet
and other sources outside an organizations
circle of influence, such as posts by their
friends on Facebook or comments on review
sites. This calls for organizations to position
their social media efforts to replicate this
community-oriented buying experience.
They should use collaborative marketing and
engagement strategies to turn consumers into
brand advocators who are willing to contribute
discretionary time and effort to ensure the
success of their adopted brands. Accordingly,
organizations need to increasingly find and
cultivate influencers.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/
anatomy-of-facebook/10150388519243859

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2012/consumertrust-in-online-social-and-mobile-advertising-grows.html

Time spent on social media

per day
5%

Digital media consumption

93%

27%

73%

30%
19%

40%

19%
22%
< 15 minutes

61-90 minutes

15-30 minutes

> 90 minutes

31-60 minutes

Visit FB pages?

Facebook Google+

YouTube

Twitter

15%
LinkedIn

6%

6%

Flickr

Others

Key reasons for visiting FB pages

64%
36%

Yes

When I am looking for some

information related to the
product/brand/company

No

When I want to check if there

are any updates on the page
When updates/pictures related to
a page are posted on my FB wall
When I want to check if there are
any offers/discounts on the page

Sources of information

51%

45%

36%

31%

ActivitiesTime spent online

Information/
Knowledge
Socializing/
Networking

45%
38%

Entertainment

5%

Product reviews/
information

4%

Data sharing

3%

Company website

18%

Social media sources

22%

Job search

2%

Google Search

59%

Expert reviews/blogs

1%

News

2%

Purchasing

1%

Gaming

1%

10

Smartphones
driving consumer acquisition
India has the second-largest mobile subscriber
base and one of the fastest growing mobile
Internet usage across the world. More than
50 percent of the Internet traffic originates
from smartphoneswith SMS and apps
dominating usage.5 Our survey indicates that
38 percent of consumers use smartphones
on the go to communicate and access the
Internet. It also shows that 41 percent of
consumers subscribe to SMS from a
brand/company.
Apps offer value-added functionalities,
and consumers are getting hooked to the
convenience it provides. For example, with a
single click, consumers can use location-based
services to find restaurants of their choice,
read reviews, make reservations, get turn-byturn navigation to the destination, and view
deals and discounts. Apps are also changing
the way consumers shop today. By scanning
QR codes of products using their smartphones,
consumers can shop and arrange for delivery
from anywhere, anytime.
To capture this rapidly exploding consumer
base, marketers need to create specialized
tools and consumer-centric apps, and invest
in providing a world-class mobile platform. A
few organizations are already heading in this
direction. Some of the interesting examples
include: Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce
company, has launched a tool that allows
mobile users to scan a products barcode and
check its availabilitya feature also available
on Amazon India. It is also working on a tool
that will use a customers location to provide
customized deals. Indiatimes Shopping,
an e-commerce division of The Times Group,
Indias largest media conglomerate, is
set to launch special promotions for
mobile-based customers. Snapdeal is
attempting to personalize its mobile app
according to customers usage. It is also
developing an in-site search engine for
mobile and is revamping its mobile backend.6

Device used most of the times

India is expected to
become the third-largest
smartphone market
by 2017.7
Customers shopping
through mobile devices

38%

Smartphone

make up for up to a

35%
Desktop

third of sales at online

retail sites.6
Mobile-only shoppers are
as valuable as desktop
users, with average spends

25%
Laptop

Tablet

only marginally lower.6

Download Apps

2%

Subscribe to SMS
from brand/company

SMS

22% Yes
78% No

41% Yes
59% No

http://www.telecomcircle.com/2013/11/
mobileinternet-india/

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-23/
news/46514105_1_indiatimes-shopping-amazon-indiamobile-users

http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/
h5BwcFMNP7yxOT5wrzF5lK/India-to-become-thirdlargestsmartphone-market-by-2017-IDC.html

11

Company websites
not interactive enough for consumers
Online channels offer instant access to
product and pricing information. Our survey
indicates that 45 percent of time spent
online is used for gathering information
on brands, with Google Search being the
most popular, followed by social media
and company websites. Approximately
67 percent of consumers visit five or
more Facebook pages per week to gather
information related to a product,
brand or company.
Our survey findings reveal that company
websites are preferred for seeking information
about a brand over Facebook pages64
percent consumers visit company websites
as compared to only 33 percent who like or
subscribe to Facebook pages. This could be
attributed to the fact that consumers are
not ready to commit to a brand easily or
hesitate to pledge their loyalty easily. The
three main reasons cited by consumers for
visiting the websites are: gather information
about products (61 percent), compare products
(49 percent), and look for offers, schemes and
discounts (49 percent).
According to Accenture research, a strong
correlation exists between the length of time
visitors spend on a brands website and the
likelihood to purchase that brand in the store.8
Further, the research highlights the following
website attributes that are closely correlated
with a higher brand purchase index (greater
brand spending in store for website visitors
than nonvisitors):
Message: A compelling brand value message
that provides a persuasive reason, other than a
coupon, for a website visitor to buy the brand.
Content: The content needs to be updated
at least every week to encourage visitors to
engage, participate and return frequently. It
should create an engaging online experience,
such as a pulse survey on the home page, an
opportunity to rate a new product or product
attribute, or user-generated content such as
recipes or weight-loss planning. Content with
a philanthropic appeal such as sustainability or
participation in a food bank also was shown to
create greater engagement.

12

Website: Well-designed site navigation that

is intuitive, uses simple menus and has clear
site maps.
Despite the significant potential of company
websites to drive engagement, most companies
fail to use this channel effectively. Our survey
shows that consumers are not satisfied with
their experience with a company website. They
are not satisfied with most of the attributes
of a companys website. Many consumers feel
that company websites are also not effective
in listening to them. Eighty-six percent
consumers surveyed were not satisfied with
the avenues for posting queries or providing
feedback on company websites.

http://www.brandchannel.com/images/papers/534_
CPG%20White%20Paper.pdf

reasons for visiting company websites

Discount Code

XYZ123

3O5FF%

Online channels offer

unlimited source of
product and pricing
information instantly

67%
consumers visit five or more company
Facebook pages per week to look for
brand information

45%

users spend time online

gathering information on
products and services

Google Search
is most popular for
gathering brand
information, followed
by social media and then
company websites

search

But, consumers are

not satisfied:
61%

to gather product information

49%

to compare products

49%

to look for offers,

schemes and discounts

86%

not satisfied with websites

for posting queries or
providing feedback

62%

not satisfied with the

look and feel of the
company website

57%

find it difficult to navigate the

websites to find the information
they need

13

E-retailers
rising role of match makers
The number of online buyers is growing.
According to a report by CRISIL, the Indian
online retail industry is expected to grow
from INR32 billion in 2012 to INR100 billion
in 2015.9 Today, for instance, consumers shop
online for apparel, which is delivered at their
placewith an option to return if they are not
satisfied with the product. Savvy consumers
check product ratings and reviews or feedback
on e-retailers to confirm if both products and
vendors provide the best value and service,
respectively. Our survey shows that 72 percent
consumers prefer e-retailers for online
purchases, with only 28 percent preferring
company websites.
The survey highlights that 67 percent of
consumers buy fashion and apparel category,
which is considerably higher than 43 percent
of consumers who buy personal care products.
Overall, 47 percent consumers have made
online purchases, spending 24 percent of
their total budget online.10 Our analysis
also shows that online retailers offer better
deals and multibrand options, thus providing
greater choice to consumers. They also offer
product comparison. Consequently, 45 percent
consumers said that availability of discounts
or offers were more important to them than
the brand offered, while less than one-third
consumers opted for brands. Twenty-four
percent were indifferent to either discounts
or brand. Will this signal the often talked
aboutwithering away of the brand? Only
time will tell. But, the value-conscious Indian
consumers seem, at this point in time, to favor
exclusive discounts or offersthe key reason
for buying from e-retailers.

Product categories bought online

67%
Fashion
and apparel
43%
Education and
Information

25%

17%

Automotive

Services

43%
Personal care

23%
Household care

US$8.5 billion in 2012 to

Reasons for buying through

online retailer

72%
28%

online retailers

Exclusive discounts/
offers

company website

Lots of product/
services options

www

Discount or brands?

84 percent of consumers

media useful and 45 percent

bought products based on it.
14

54%

Easy navigation
through the website

51%

Payment
mode options

50%
42%

Safe online
transaction
Redeemable loyalty/
bonus points

18%
7%

According to our survey,

advertisements on social

Others

55%

Used to shopping
through online retailer

US$16 billion in 2013.11

surveyed found

13%

Online retailers or
company website?

Indias e-commerce market

grew at 88 percent from

Household items

19%
Food and
beverage

32%

45%
31%
24%

Offers/discounts
most important

Brand most
important

None of
the above

http://www.indianonlineseller.in/tag/ebay/page/2/

This includes discretionary spendover and above household spend;

also the survey was restricted to a metro-centric audience.

10

http://ventureburn.com/2014/01/india-spent-us16-billion-online-in2013-up-88-from-2012/

11

What should todays

marketers do?
Based on our survey findings and insights, Accenture believes that organizations
increasingly need to:
Bring a brands promise to life through a differentiated
digital experience, and not merely use digital channels as
information bulletins.
Increase by capability to extract actionable insights.
Manage a consistent digital presence and positioning
across search optimization tools, social media and
company websites.
Use company websites to drive purchase, and not
just awareness.
Partner with e-retailers to offer attractive online promotions.
Leverage apps as a means to reach an increasingly mobile
audience and provide an enhanced brand experience.

15

Accelerating the journey

toward digital optimization
Accenture has developed a framework
Develop, Connect and Optimizeto help
organizations accelerate their journey toward
digital optimization and get consumers to
commit to a long-term relationship. Mastering
the ability to fully tap digital channels to
provide a differentiated experience will drive
customer loyalty.

16

Develop
DigitalStrategy and
Operating Model

Connect
Unified Consumer
Experience

Optimize
Digital Capabilities,
Analytics and
Technology

Do you have a digital

strategy in place?
Listed below are questions to help you assess if your digital strategy is holistic:
Digital vision and strategic objective
What is your vision for digital marketing?
What is the strategic objective of your digital strategy, and
how will it help achieve your business goals?
Is your digital strategy aligned with your overall
brand strategy?
Target consumer segments
Which consumer segments do you want to target?
What channel mix should you use to connect
with your audience?
How do you plan to position your brand digitally?
Assortment and pricing strategy
What is your online assortment strategy?
How do you plan to balance the online and
offline channel strategy?
Capability gap assessment
Do you have resources to execute your strategy
such as the right technology, people, process
and infrastructure?

17

Develop
For Procter & Gamble (P&G),
winning digital consumers is an
enterprise-wide responsibility,
requiring contributions from
functions and areas across the
company. Far from being the role
of sales, brand or marketing teams,
the company combines talent,
assets and insights to operate in
a fundamentally different way.
It uses new organizational
structures and operating models
geared toward making the
most of investments in
serving digital consumers.12
Organizations attempt at digital is often
limited to a few tweets, e-mail marketing
blasts or a one-off campaign on Facebook.
Despite spending 13 percent of their media
budget in 2014 on digital (according to our
survey), organizations are not able to reach
the required level of dialogue, interaction
and engagement. This percentage is likely to
increase to 20 percent over the next four to
five years, according to Accenture analysis.
Considering this growth, organizations need to
build a digital ecosystem comprising analytics,
technical maintenance, content sourcing
and management, customer relationship
management and media management to
help become truly digital. For instance,
organizations require content that is updated
at least weekly to encourage visitors to
engage, participate and return frequently.
Further, the content should be monitored
frequentlyon real-time basis.
Organizations need an impactful social media
strategy delivered via the right organizational
model. Successful strategies are based on a
number of factors. These include: identifying
the business objective upfront, which span
across functions within the organization;
creating a clear digital vision; ensuring
alignment with the overall brand strategy;
developing a pricing strategy; identifying the
consumer segment; and developing requisite
capabilities to execute the strategy.
Organizations can choose from a range of
models, but they first need to answer a few
basic questions: Do we need to centralize and
to what extent? What is the level of maturity
in digital operations? What role does digital
play in future business plans? Some of the
predominant models include:

18

Centralized versus
decentralized

In-house versus outsourced

business processes

Take, for example, consumer goods

companies facing the challenge
of managing multiple brands.
Typically, they deal with this by
compartmentalizing operations
through brand, product group or
other divisions. As a result, it is
not unusual for a company to
have multiple business units
each with their own individual
relationships with advertising
agencies as well as investments
in disparate development
tools and platforms. While this
compartmentalized business
model provides individual business
groups/brands much-needed agility,
it comes at the cost of achieving
economies of scale. It also leads to
inconsistent communications with
the end customer.

One leading consumer goods

company is moving toward an
open marketing model by
shrinking its core marketing
team, whose members then lead
a network of specialized external
partners. This way, the company
always has immediate access
to the latest thinking and
newest approaches to real-time
digital marketing.13

Digital spend as a percentage

of total marketing spend

http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/
Accenture-Winning-and-Retaining-the-Digital-Consumer.pdf
12

http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/
Accenture_Outlook_Are_you_ready_for_digital_revolution_
Marketing.pdf
13

Entity driving digital

media activity

18%

13%

Digital agency

Digital

18%

7%

Other external
agencies

Flyers

10%

18%

Digital media
division

46%

Marketing division

Direct to
consumer

43%

Audio visual

9%

Outdoor
media

5%
Radio

13%

Print media

Connect
For Starbucks Corporation,
customer experience involves
connecting the dots among
in-store, online, mobile and social
media environments with
a common language, look and feel,
philosophy, and commitment
to personalization and
intent-based options.14
With multiple channels at play, consumers
want a cohesive experience at every stage
of their brand relationship. Knitting together
such an experience requires integration across
touchpoints, where relevance, consistency
and customization flow seamlessly
between channels.

The expanding number

of touchpoints makes
it more difficult to
find the right mix and
tools to serve
customers consistently.

A single channel, even if executed well, has

limited impact and provides just a slice of
insight into consumer behavior, and it can
potentially be misleading given that consumers
use a variety of channels. What results is a
discordant experience for consumers. It could
be in the form of a landing page that does not
support a search query, a store clerk unaware
of an online offer or discrepancy in price
across different channels. This can result in
consumers clicking away or walking away.
The bottom line is that companies need
to revisit how they use digital platforms,
refocusing investments to generate consumer
insights, decrease customer service costs or
increase customer reach. A true multichannel
strategy integrates, leverages, measures
and optimizes the unique properties and
advantages of each channel. Consumer
behaviors on websites, social networks,
mobile apps, e-mails and in stores should
be considered in prioritizing multichannel
investments. The best marketing strategy is
one that promotes an ongoing, synchronized
dialogue with consumers. It demands
companies to develop the ability to listen
to it, analyze it and identify consumers
expectations, preferences and opinions, and
the shifts in all three.
The selection of digital media initiatives
must be based on three business objectives
customer acquisition, experience and service,
and insight and innovation.

Customer acquisition
With smartphones becoming pervasive, even
people with basic digital skills use their
smartphones on the go to communicate and
access the Internet (38 percent). Further, apps
are changing the way consumers shop today.
By scanning QR codes of products with their
smartphones, consumers can shop and arrange
for delivery from anywhere, anytime.

Take the case of Ford Motor

Company. To promote Figo in India,
the auto giant ran advertisements
in leading newspapers with the
QR code. Readers were invited
to download an app that would
read the code by sending a text
message. The result: they could
play a video of the Figo on
the move.15

http://nstore.accenture.com/acn_com/PDF/AccentureNew-Energy-Consumer-Handbook-2013.pdf
14

15
http://www.indiasocial.in/qr-codes-to-be-the-digitaltrend-of-the-future-in-india/

Role of digital

Customer Acquisition
Increase revenue and market share
Brand building/Awareness/PR

Word of mouth/Viral marketing

Search engine optimization

UGC reviews/ratings/testimonies

Direct (mainly charities)

Rich/Targeted advertising

Customer Experience and Service

Improve customer loyalty and reduce or avoid costs
Self-service resources

Self-help communities

Monitoring and engagement

Customer Insight and Innovation

Create, improve and differentiate products and services
Buzz monitoring
Crowdsourcing

Sentiment analysis

Private and open communities

Market research/competitive intelligence

19

Customer insight and innovation

Customer experience and service

Our survey indicates that 45 percent of the
time spent online is used to gather information
on brands. A fact not missed by marketers,
who are using the online medium to
undertake campaigns and engage better with
their consumers.

Take the case of Axe deodorant

(a brand owned by Unilever).16 The
company used multiple digital
channels (social media sites such
as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube;
company website; mobile;
banners and search engines) to
reach, engage and acquire target
consumers. The brand created
fictitious angels and used them
as an underlying theme across
campaigns. The company created
Axe Angel Club pages on various
social media sites to connect
with customers.
One of the campaigns encouraged
consumers to call and connect
with the angels on a specified
number. Consumers were also
given an option to receive free
wake-up calls from the angels. The
campaign was a massive hit and
resulted in about four million calls
to the designated number, with a
whopping 40 percent repeat calls.
About one million wake-up calls
were made to the subscribers.
During the campaign, the
brands market share increased
by 34 percent.

In a separate campaign, Axe

launched a special edition product
coinciding with the Cricket World
Cup. Axe angels provided regular
cricket updates to the consumers
along with other relevant content.
It helped Axe add more than
1.7 million fans on Facebook and
achieve a feedback rate of about
15 percent.
The holistic consumer
experience strategy enabled
Axe to differentiate itself from
competitors, making it the premier
deodorant brand in India with a
market share of about 14 percent.
With the digital campaigns, Axe
garnered more than four million
Facebook likes, more than
2.1 million YouTube views and
0.17 million subscribers, more
than 0.31 million Twitter followers,
and more than one million mobile
app downloads. The social media
content achieved a feedback rate
of about 15 percent.

The role of influencers(PLU)is gaining

importance. Today, buyers often rely on sources
outside an organizations circle of influence,
such as reading comments posted by their
friends on Facebook or posted on review sites,
to purchase brands.

Take the case of Maggi (a brand

owned by Nestle).17 To promote its
instant noodles brand Maggi as
a healthy, easy-to-cook product,
Nestle came up with a creative
idea to use a digital platform to
generate ideas for Maggi flavors by
using crowdsourcing. It launched
the MaggiDo Minute Mein
Khushiyan (happiness in two
minutes) campaign to tap the
emotional relationship Maggi has
with its consumers.
Nestle created a Facebook app and
asked consumers to share their
stories with Maggi in video, photo
or written formats. All the stories
received were uploaded on a
website, and the best stories were
recognized and made into films.
The campaign received an
overwhelming response from
customers, with people of all ages
sharing their experiences. The key
success factor for the campaign
was consumer involvement and
the user-friendly Facebook app.
The success of this campaign
shows that establishing an open
environment that welcomes ideas,
collaboration, contribution and
evaluation can help organizations
reduce innovation cycles and
maximize market impact.

http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/33528_Axe-goesbullish-on-digital-to-introduce-stronger-fragrance
16

17
http://www.campaignindia.in/Article/242985,maggilooks-to-consumers-for-new-flavours.aspx

20

Optimize
Activision Blizzard Inc., a computer
games developer, partnered with
an analytics firmwhich captures
analytics data on 250 million
consumers dailyto test and
improve gameplay in real time.18
Netflixs analytics capabilities
lead the film rental industry,
enabling the company to cater to
individual consumers preferences
in recommending titles for rent.18

Optimize returns: One of the biggest

problems today is that while consumers
operate in a multichannel world, the metrics
of their interactions are still in a silo, making
it difficult to measure the entire consumer
journey in an integrated manner. Social media
blurs the issue of measurement as it presents
an entire ecosystem of customer touchpoints
not just between a company and its
customers, but also between those customers
and other customers or companies. Further
complicating matters are the unstructured
data and the inability of most companies to
truly understand the context within which
the customer or partner is engaging in social
media dialogue.

A company must define the metrics that social

media is intended to improveconversion
rates, service costs, brand awareness or
number of new product ideas that reach
the marketplace. Accenture believes that
companies should develop an integrated
strategic returncustomer valuewhich
gauges a customers real and potential
value to the organization. Encompassing a
customers historic lifetime value, potential
lifetime value, and social reach and influence,
the customer health measure helps companies
predict the impact of social media investments
to increase revenue, profitability and
long-term customer loyalty.

Optimize data: Digital channels ensure that

data is available for analysis in real time and
with increasingly more relevance. The unique
datasets collected through digital interactions
have two broad organizational implications:
They allow an organization to rigorously
assess the impact of digital campaigns
and make real-time adjustments based on
customer engagement, market events and
overall campaign performance.
They allow an organization to optimize
the customer experience by personalizing
content in real time and enabling other
channels to act on that real-time
information. With the increasing
integration of data from the digital
channels with other data, the opportunity
grows to generate and predict new insights.
Consequently, companies need to develop a
cross-functional, integrated analytics vision.
They also need to invest in technology,
processes and talent to identify target
consumer segments as well as tailor marketing
and sales strategies and offers.

http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/changingconsumer/
Documents/pdf/Accenture-Energizing-Global-Growth.pdf
18

21

Do you have a robust

analytics platform?
Listed below are questions to help you assess the analytics quotient of your organization:
Integration across the marketing cycle
Does your analytics platform offer an integrated view of
your consumer across the buying cycle?
Does the analytics platform help generate consumer insights
across key marketing levers?
Data management and analytics
Do you have analytics capabilities to support insight
generation on website delivery?
Reporting and insights
Are key result areas (KRAs) clearly defined for analytics?
Do your reports capture key elements for management
information system (MIS) and action planning?
Is there a governance process to oversee timelines and
action plan by brand teams, and manage ongoing reviews?

22

Conclusion:
Building customer loyalty
As consumers expectations from a brand rise,
it becomes tough to retain them. They get
easily swayed by other suitors who woo them,
understand them, listen to them, know what
they want and appreciate them. Organizations
need to have a game plan to build loyaltya
comprehensive digital strategy, an integrated
technical infrastructure and capabilities to
execute the strategy. They need to focus on
turning consumers into brand advocates, who
are willing to contribute time and effort to
ensure the success of the adopted brand. They
need to work with these advocates to cocreate
offerings, which gives the latter greater
involvement, ownership and identification with
their brands, creating a sense of loyalty that can
serve companies well in a crowded marketplace.
Focusing on data analytics, using insights to
innovate, improving social listening, providing
an integrated experience across channels,
optimizing the use of company websites to
drive e-commerce and going mobile can
help companies differentiate their brands, stay
relevant and build loyalty. This will require
companies to drive radical strategic change.

23

Authors

About Accenture

Vikas Bali
Managing director
Accenture Strategy, India
vikas.bali@accenture.com

Accenture is a global management

consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company, with approximately
289,000 people serving clients in
more than 120 countries. Combining
unparalleled experience, comprehensive
capabilities across all industries and
business functions, and extensive
research on the worlds most successful
companies, Accenture collaborates
with clients to help them become
high-performance businesses and
governments. The company generated net
revenues of US$28.6 billion for the fiscal
year ended Aug. 31, 2013. Its home page
is www.accenture.com.

Rowena Gayle
Manager Products
Accenture in India
rowena.gayle@accenture.com

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