Consumer journey has become more complex and non-linear, with digital likely to play a key role among 75% of all consumer journeys this festive season, as per Winning the 2022 Festive Season with Optimal Media Strategies playbook by MMA India, along with WPP’s GroupM and Amazon Ads. While consumer sentiment remains positive this festive season with 35% consumers likely to increase their festive spends from last year, the uncertain macro-economic environment is leading to consumers being more cautious before spending. As a result, 67% of all consumer will research more this festive season than last year.
As per Tushar Vyas, president, growth and transformation, GroupM South Asia, consumers and their purchase patterns have become more complex today, and digital is playing a larger role throughout this journey. “For brands, digital has evolved into an essential marketing touchpoint. To influence consumer behaviour, marketers need to create full funnel strategies across active and passive stages of the purchase cycle. Understanding digital consumers will become increasingly important for marketers – especially, in-market segments during festival seasons.”
Furthermore, the playbook revealed that most marketers are increasing their spends on digital with median digital spends at 40%. Digital mediums are going to have a key role in the decision-making with 70% of consumers planning to research online, and 66% of consumer journeys will involve Amazon. The report shows that brands need to engage with the audience by using high–intent audience signals and should use a mix of various formats across the entire consumer journey. Marketers should leverage ‘efficiency’ metrics to enrich performance which will help them in understanding the true impact of their strategy.
Today, life without digital is hard to imagine, with every aspect of our life being encompassed in an ever-growing wave of options that fuel our needs, interests, aspirations, curiosity and much more, Vijay Iyer, director, ad sales, Amazon Ads India said. “Digital media is fuelling depth and width in the consumer journey like never before. For marketers, this presents the opportunity to be at the “right place at the right time” by enabling the identification and engagement of high-intent consumers across the most critical touchpoints,” he added.
For Moneka Khurana, country head and board member, MMA India, the handbook is sure to help brands navigate the challenging times and drive optimal visibility and performance which unveils how big a role digital plays in terms of influence and percentage spending with 80% of consumer journeys will be digitally influenced whilst 60% of marketers allocating more spends for digital as compared to last year. “These are interesting times wherein the consumer showcases non-linear complex purchase patterns hence would be key to observe how this festive season unfolds for businesses in this season.”
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