This essay has identified a customer Insights journey map/funnel showing five main phases (Awareness; Consideration; Purchase;Retentionand Advocacy). In each of these phases, the essay shows relevant Digital/Physical touchpoints related to its case study (55 years old female customer).
This essay will focus on the three meaningful touchpoints (two physicals: Need for touch and Storesand one digital: Online research) in three different Customer journey steps (Awareness, Considerationand Purchase).Furthermore, this essay will construct a literature review for the touchpoints took into consideration to outline the critical issues in the case of a 55 years old Italian woman named Maria.
Maria needs a pair of comfortable/good trainers for her walking club she has just joined. She is currently working as a Marketing manager for a Radio company in her hometown (Milan). Maria has a husband and two children. She is ready to spend a high amount of money for the right product, but she is scared of any possible risk. Maria knows how to use the internet, but she never relied on it by undertaking online purchases. She is those kinds "see to believe" women.
As the first step (Self-Awareness) Maria decides to gather some information online, surfing on the internet trough walking shoe forums, websites, community etc.… The information that the Internet was offering her were too much and too broad. Not having any idea (knowledge) of the product she was going to buy, she could not elaborate, critically, that information. At this point, Maria tries to contact someone that had her same problem in an online chat and ask for advice. This option has revealed bias because of different customers’ value perception (Avery et al. 2012). Furthermore, she does not even know anything about her online chat source (foot size, shoe preference, what does the source think is a walking shoe and how close is the online source shoe description to a real walking shoe?).
Moreover, there is a high risk that the advice comes from a loyal customer towards a particular brand being biased and impartial (Blackwell et al. 2001). Maria considered the Internet as an efficient information sharing source but an inefficient experience sharing source for her self-awareness. After having tried Online information gathering, as a good marketer does, she starts to get into a more physical approach. Her offline community (walking club) was more than a decent way to create the right awareness and knowledge about the right pair of trainers. The experience of her walking club colleagues enhanced her shoe expertise and produced objective knowledge(Brucks, 1985; Sujan, 1985), giving her, this time, the tools to elaborate information critically Online.
Now Maria, having the information she needed, is entering into the Considerationphase. To better understand and explain this phase, this essay will take into consideration a scheme from Roy, L. (2018) work (figure1).
This phase is divided into three steps (Economic goals; Self-affirmation and Symbolic meaning) which will identify the trainers' total utility perceived from Maria by undertaking a comparison approach.
It Is fundamental to clarify how the self-awareness phase will shape and narrow down Maria’s purchase journey through the marketing funnel. Internet, as poor experience sharing source, brought Maria to apply a consumer behaviour called “web-rooming” (Reid et al., 2016), which consist in browsing online and purchasing offline in physical stores. Web-rooming is the most heightened behaviour (Arora and Sahney, 2017) for saving time and limit risk, which is the main Maria's concerns.
Maria is goal-oriented and rational. Her shopping behaviour is driven by her spasmodic research between the best pair of trainers and the right (convenient) price. Her shopping motivation, based on her shopping behaviour mentioned above, is purely utilitarian (Babin et al., 1994). Maria's point is not to save money on such an essential product for her but is to use that money for the right one (high balance Quality/Price) to satisfy her quality standards. Her biggest fear, as the majority of customers, is to spend too much for a pair of low-quality trainers. Finally, after having gathered enough information (word of mouth – online) Maria decides the right shoes consideration set (Alba, J. et al. 1997; van Dijk et al. 2006), which usually is about five products (Nedungadi, 1990).
Many consumers like Maria still demand physical experiences in stores primarily in the case of clothing products (Roy, L. et al.,2018). Moreover, Maria's self-affirmation criteria are satisfied with a "need for touch"(Schmitt, B. 1997; Peck and Childers, 2003),which will enhance herfinal product utility perception (Krishna 1992). Moreover, customers’ need for physical interactions is a way to avoid any risk and loss of money (Erdem, et al., 2004). After further evaluation travelling through stores, Maria selects her favourite pair of trainers which gives her the maximum utility (Roy, L. et al. 2018).
Maria is a dynamic customer; she is approaching for the first time a different product and her past online researches were the very first contact with this unknown market. As a consequence, she is giving a strong symbolic meaning (Roy, L. et al. 2018) to her first pair of walking shoes. The effort she is putting, travelling around all the shoe stores, is an experiential moment which is enhancing the symbolic value of her trainers and consequently the utility (Ibid.).
Maria, now knows what type of trainers she is going to buy (Nike Air, white leather). In this purchasestage, she is directly contributing to Nike, which now starts to consider her Lifetime Value as a potential loyal customer (CLV) (Venkatesan and Kumar, 2004). She is now Nike’s customer, and Nike will try to earn her loyalty to make her buy again. Here they come selling techniques like up-selling and cross-selling (Wagner, 2008) which are efficient with new customers or loyal customer that are purchasing new products. Her final decision could be an individual decision as well as an influenced one (from some customers loyal towards Nike) or could be the result of a "Halo effect"(Caruana 1997)of Nike reputation. Firm reputation is a pivotal point for customers’ product perception (Weigelt, 1988) and less risk perception (Gonzalez-Benito et al., 2015).
At this moment Maria is going to experience her “first moment of truth” (FMOT) (Sam et al., 2018) buying her first pair of trainers in a renewed retailer store(Foot Locker) in Milan. Her experience in the store was excellent, the staff helped her through her journey, and her first overall purchase evaluation was outstanding. Foot Locker services and customer care enhanced Marias’s purchase experience satisfaction(Jin Byoungho2010).All the effort she put in this journey was reworded, and this experience gave her more confidence in what she was buying creating a first Nike image (excellent service, kind staff, perfect product, a vast array of choices, etc…). Her “positive evaluations of transaction experiences” (Oliver, 1980)made her a satisfied customer. Her satisfying experience will be a topic of conversation, helping Nike with an indirect contribution to profit by influencing her network “Consumer influence value” (CIV) (Venkatesan and Kumar, 2004).
This essay has illustrated into the particular the main three steps of Maria’s Purchase journey (Self-Awareness; Considerationand Purchase). in these three steps we can notice how Maria, to achieve her goal (buying a pair of walking shoes), used multiple channels (Online information, Word of mouth, Online researches and stores). Multi-channel retailing (MCR) is continuously evolving trying to satisfy the technological fast customers' demand (Boardman and McCormick, 2018). The prevalence of MCR instead of Omnichannel retailers (OCR) is even due to two of the four principles of marketing Strategy: “customers differ, and customers change” (Palmatier, 2017).
Another reason why OCR is less utilised than MCR is that they offer fewer comparison choices and consequently increase customer purchase risk, which affects the customer final purchase decision. Physical stores generate the majority of sales (PWC’s Annual Global Total Retail Consumer Survey, 2017) and they remain essential.
As we saw Maria showed a complex but usual customer behaviour in her purchase journey. She was always going back and forth through multiple channels (Alba et al., 1997; Peterson, 1997) to make the right choice. Maria’s purchase journey mirrors the average customers’ purchase journeys behaviour. Moreover, being a high age customer, she is more likely to use MCR (Boardman, 2018). This statement mirrors and justify what has been wrote above in this essay and strengthen the essay’s affirmation for a possible 55 years old woman seeking for a pair of trainers.
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Paolo Casula, Marketer Freelancer
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