Companies Need To Focus Data Collection On Identifying And Forming Consumer Habits
Companies are very fixated on the concept of loyalty. Loyalty, or faithfulness or devotion, is an emotional state that is extremely difficult to quantify. Instead of using the term “loyalty” we should be using the term “habit” and measuring the habitual response of consumers.
This ties into big data and market intelligence.
Companies need market intelligence but they also need strategies to help identify habit-forming moments in their target demographics as well as how to help form habits with consumers when those opportunities present themselves. The reason being is that a majority of consumer behavior is driven by habit – right around, if not more than 50%. It is much higher, for example, in women over 40 (75% of women form buying habits to 49% of men). This means that a majority of purchases are made through subconscious habits, which make it harder for alternative habits to form (or in other words, for alternative products and services to break in and win over a consumer).
Thinking on the consumer side (though this can be applied to B2B and B2G offerings), if consumer product manufacturers and/or retailers can identify the moments when new habits can be formed and target consumers at those times, they will establish longer-term customer relationships.
If you are depending on people to make a conscious decision to change their habit, then you need some kind of trigger or consumer pain. Great salesmen are very skilled at identifying pain points. But from a data perspective, think about how a company’s aggressive data collection of a competitor’s online reputation can yield a trigger for a change in consumer behavior? If you know a product or service is not performing well, you can target solutions and try to force a change in habit. This is using data to be disruptive to existing habits and create new ones.
Looking at it from the consumer side – say you are supermarket and you knew that a man was waking up every day at 5 am for a swim workout. You could use geotargeting through a mobile device to identify healthy ways that person could recharge and send them a personalized deal set. The daily deal concept for example, which is strictly price driven and not habit-forming, gets turned on its head because now the merchant has access to a habit forming moment and can use target deals to hook the consumer and then build the habit going forward. Instead of a one-deal for all, you are now using technology to identify consumer habits and create new habits going forward.
With the growth of data collection allowing companies to measure virtually every moment of our lives, there is no reason why companies should be offering cookie-cutter deals or why as consumers we should accept them.
- Published in Idea Building, Marketing, Mobile
QBurst Launches theapps.mobi For iPhone/iPod App Searching
QBurst, a web and mobile application development company based in Fairfax, VA, has launched theapps.mobi, a searchable directory of iPhone apps ranging from Education, Business and Entertainment to Travel, Weather and Lifestyle.
Theapps.mobi provides a sophisticated web site that provides users the ability to browse through a detailed catalog of iPhone and iPod Touch applications, reducing the need to browse the Apple store for applications.
What’s more, the site provides iPhone application developers a chance to be recognized via search engines as well as through its changing “featured” and “latest” application highlights, which are shown prominently on the main screen beneath the app search bar.
The site was designed by QBurst to run on Google’s App Engine platform, and the company will manage the site.
QBurst, which also has offices in India and the UK, consists of a team of over 200 professionals that help design and develop custom applications for companies of all sizes.
- Published in Mobile, Technology, Upcoming Events
BoxTone Launches Mobility Management Unit for Public Sector
BoxTone, a Columbia, Maryland-based company that develops software for smartphone device management, announced it has established a public sector unit designed to serve federal, state and local governments as well as other public sector organizations and the military.
The Company, which recently surpassed 500,000 enterprise-connected BlackBerry smartphones that are being managed, tracked and controlled by the BoxTone software suite, has over 230 businesses and government agencies as clients. In addition to supporting BlackBerry users on an enterprise level, BoxTone also supports the ActiveSync platform, which features iPhone, Android, Palm Pre and Windows Mobile devices.
With the rapid growth of smartphone deployment through the government and public sector, BoxTone has seen the need for a mobile platform that supports emergency communication, mobile applications and other critical needs rise. Already the provider for the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Capitol Police, General Services Administration, and state and local government clients, BoxTone sees the rollout of a public sector unit as a logical step to help provide enhance services and support.
In a recent press release, BoxTone vice president for the public sector practice, Brian Murphy, confirmed as much, saying, “With an existing client base of top-tier federal, state and local governments and military organizations using our software to harden their mobile platforms, BoxTone is now launching our Public Sector Practice to focus increased resources on the support and success of all mobile government professionals.”
- Published in Mobile, Upcoming Events