How are consumers reacting to uncertainty?
The last two weeks we’ve asked you to consider the importance of tapping into your consumer to make better decisions in an unpredictable state of play.
We’ve suggested you lean into your consumers even more than usual. So we’ve walked the talk, and activated our Consumer Activation System, in order to bring you synthesized insight of how people are reacting to unpredictability, and in particular the uncertainty of price increases.
What have we learned from your consumers?
People have definitely felt price increases recently. We can see this is largely felt with food, groceries, gas and bills.
In the UK this has been felt significantly more in the food category.
But it has a knock-on effect. So it’s not surprising that there is a drive to switch to a cheaper brand in most categories. Therefore value and emotional drive become bigger elements to tap into to avoid consumer price switching and competitor price wars.
Many have even changed the amount they’ve spent in the last 6 months. But when we dig beneath the data, we can reveal through synthesis of unprompted response, that the reasons behind this are largely driven by low financial stability, and people being more responsible about their spending. While many talked of price increases or uncertainty of costs, we can still see the same effects of Covid on people’s spending habits at play as we did last Spring – being more savvy with how and when they spend their money.
But it’s important to remember spending is the outcome of people’s attitudes and emotional drivers. When we look beyond spending, and understand people’s outlook on life we start seeing some interesting drivers about what they care about. With the environment and mental health being at the top of their concerns right now, above financial concerns. And so this indicates there are potential value areas brands can tap into to connect with people’s hearts and minds.
It’s promising to know that significantly more people are optimistic about the future improving. From people’s unsolicited natural responses about why this was, we can see how powerful a positive growth mindset is for people – looking for the best outlook on life.
This is a small snapshot of synthesised insight from people’s response to the world right now. We can bring complete consumer clarity into your big questions across discovery, innovation development, communication development, and go-to-market development, to help you make better decisions, quicker.