You live with your products. You think about them every day, you probably use them regularly. It is easy to forget that your consumers don’t know them nearly as intimately as you do.
It may seem like an obvious point, but it is one that I observe to be overlooked on so many occasions.
At a very basic level the more your consumer understands your product the better they will be able to differentiate it from your competitors. Your product undoubtedly does what it is supposed to – it quenches thirst, cleans the surface, is tasty and satisfying – but so do all your competitors.
If your consumer is choosing a product for what it does, they have a range of alternatives to choose from. It is how your product does it – the consumer experience journey – that differentiates your product from your competitors. You know how your product is different, and you may have said so a few times in your communications, but does your consumer really understand this?
Then there is the way in which your product is used. Undoubtedly you have very clear instructions on pack. But consumers don’t read the box. They know how and when to clean their surfaces, to cook their meals, to eat their confectionary.
Maybe it is not the job of the brand owner to change how their consumers use their products, but perhaps if consumers understood the product better, they would use it in a slightly different way and get better results.
We were working with a client recently who has a great brand with a very popular product range. But it quickly became apparent to us that the biggest difference between regular and occasional users was in their confidence level about how to cook the product, what it should look like when served and what it should be served with.
The client could argue that some of this is covered clearly on the box and in the instructions. However, profiling the consumer journey quickly revealed inconsistencies in these communications that caused confusion with inexperienced consumers. It also revealed that just a very small step outside of their comfort zone – the very thing that made the product exciting and different – undermined their confidence in terms of how to cook and serve the product.
Occasional consumers were not becoming regular consumers not because of anything to do with the product itself, but simply because they did not understand it. They did not feel as comfortable with it as they would need to if they were to buy it more often.
Careful examination of the consumers’ journey with your brand – both the experiential journey AND the emotional journey that this triggers for the consumer – reveals why consumers love your brand or why they do not come back to it as often as you believe they should.
Not only does it show the small bumps or missteps along your brand experience, it also reveals interesting and creative ways to overcome these or to turn them to your advantage and leave your competitors wondering what you did to leave them behind.
Chris Lukehurst is a Consumer Psychologist and a Director at The Marketing Clinic:
Providing Clarity on the Psychological relationships between consumers and brands
