A partir do cenário de mercado evidenciado pela 10ª onda do Future Consumer Index, que medidas devem ser tomadas para assegurar a competitividade e a relevância das empresas nos próximos semestres? Em nossa visão, as ações precisam ter como base estes 4 pilares:
1. Review operations and portfolios to deliver better pricing conditions
Consumers are increasingly likely to seek value in their buying journeys. In an inflationary environment, companies must strengthen their portfolio management to optimize prices and profitability. To this end, one of the possibilities is the expansion of private label strategies, meeting a greater willingness of consumers to adopt this type of product as a way to maximize value and improve the cost/benefit ratio. For this to happen, brands also need to find new suppliers, ingredients, or components, as well as experiment with other attributes to optimize pricing more effectively.
Brand portfolio reviews should also seek optimization from the customer's perspective, to present an assortment that meets their consumer needs and delivers more value and profitability. With the intensification of the use of data and a personalized knowledge of the consumer, this optimization is now done in a very precise way.
Part of this portfolio overhaul includes items related to healthier living and more sustainable habits – a desire of consumers of all income brackets. An extra challenge is to offer solutions to a portion of the population that cannot or does not want to pay for this increase in value. This is not a new discussion – what is new is that, with the increase in the volume of data collected, the processing capacity of this information and the alternative ecosystems, companies have more capacity to deliver this optimized portfolio.
2. Adapt sustainability strategies to provide cost-effective solutions
Consumers are willing to live and shop more and more sustainably. Many companies will need to adopt a new strategy, approaching sustainable products and services as a cost-effective option for the consumer – not just a premium solution.
For this to happen, it will be necessary to act on business models that keep products in circulation for longer, such as rental, resale, and repairs. This also leads to scaling up existing sustainability solutions so that they can become more competitive and cost-effective to the public.
The ESG strategies of companies are now under public scrutiny, since, in the face of consumers with broad access to information, practices such as greenwashing are quickly recognized and rejected by consumers, with a strong impact on the reputation of brands. It is up to companies to review their products and processes to deliver sustainable results, with transparency and accountability, giving visibility to the impacts generated by their supply chain and broadly communicating their actions to consumers, investors and society.
3. Rebalance engagement investment to accommodate new digital opportunities
The physical world won't become an accessory to digital, but omnichannel integration will continue to grow. This will give brands new ways to engage online and in the Metaverse – a nascent medium, but one with potential for growth. Each company needs to understand how to develop a mix of digital and physical communication to connect with its audience, knowing their behavior and speaking their language. It also becomes essential to use digital resources to promote better after-sales services, boosting consumer preference and increasing the possibility of repurchase.
To avoid the flight of customers who are becoming less loyal to the brand in their purchasing decisions, businesses should define a distinct brand proposition by exploring personalized ways to engage with consumers across multiple channels. This includes experimenting with digital innovation, collecting and leveraging consumer data in ways that add value to customers' physical and digital experiences.
Efforts in commercial strategies and the creation of new channels must be aligned with an internal digitalization of the management structure. In this way, the company will be able, for example, to use payment methods that bring the convenience expected by consumers. Another area of potential gains is logistics, since digitalization can enable a better distribution of products according to the evolution of demand.
These initiatives, however, need to take into account customer concerns around data privacy and cybersecurity. More than protecting consumer data, it is necessary to build trust by showing customers that their data is used responsibly and provides tangible benefits.
4. Set KPIs that reflect changing consumer values
The various waves of the FCI show how much consumer values are changing. People are less motivated by financial rewards, and status is increasingly related to sustainable behaviors – rather than wealth. Consumers are rethinking how they spend their time and looking for ways to alternate between saving time on the things they don't like and spending time doing what they love. Job needs are increasingly defined by aspects such as flexibility and purpose, rather than careers and salaries.
To meet these emerging values, businesses must reconsider what their purpose is and the KPIs they want to establish to achieve their goals. To keep up with dynamic consumers, who move fluidly between different channels, knowledge about customer behavior cannot be static.
Therefore, companies need to develop technological initiatives that are able to predict changes in behavior, to adjust the operation according to these changes and deliver customized solutions to customers. Against this dynamic backdrop, traditional financial metrics such as growth, profitability, stock price, and shareholder return are giving way to non-financial metrics such as carbon emissions, diversity, and innovation, which redefine strategic initiatives.
Thus, companies must re-evaluate their metrics based on their importance to consumers and employees, and then develop new KPIs that incorporate non-financial values into the corporate culture.
5. Extend the concept of service to the entire ecosystem
The integration between physical and digital customer relationship channels and the appreciation of aspects such as value, practicality and experience as important factors in consumers' purchase decisions leads companies to accelerate their search for innovation – including opening up to explore opportunities in partnership with suppliers, partners and even competing companies.
The formation of ecosystems has a consumer-oriented logic, aiming to serve them in an integral way. Therefore, it can take on many facets, such as accelerating the offer of financial services, developing logistics and marketing services for marketplace sellers, or using third-party platforms to improve internal processes.
In any of these models, success in building and developing ecosystems depends on their connection to the company's long-term strategy, since this process is based on a vision of future ambition, recognition of the evolution of its audience and the competitive characteristics of each market. More than a project with a defined goal, an ecosystem is a journey of transformation of the company to deal with more demanding, informed, dynamic and digitalized consumers.
