Reflections On "The Consumer Decision Journey" - Part 2
Our review of McKinsey Quarterly's article, "The Consumer Decision Journey," continues with a look at "What Marketers Should Know." (Please see previous blog post for an overview of the article.)
The research indicated that, rather than the traditional purchasing funnel of awareness, familiarity, purchase and loyalty, a different model has emerged. No longer can marketers expect that there is a linear approach to consumers' purchasing process, nor should they assume that the consumers' initial brand consideration set is extensive and simply becomes more refined as they move toward ultimate purchase of the product or service. Neither is true in the new model, developed based on the research. What marketers should know are the various steps in the consumer decision journey.
- Initial Consideration Set: Based on a trigger event, the consumer considers an initial set of brands, based on brand perceptions and exposure to recent touchpoints.
- Active Evaluation: Consumers add or subtract brands as they evaluate what they want (through information gathering and shopping).
- Moment Of Purchase: Ultimately the consumer selects a brand at the moment of purchase.
- Postpurchase Experience: After purchasing a product or service, the consumer builds expectations based on experience to inform their next decision journey (through ongoing exposure).
The cyclical model inherent in the consumer decision journey is completed with the Loyalty Loop, which can be either active or passive, suggesting that there are really two types of consumer loyalty. If the consumer is an active loyalist, at the moment of repurchase the brand previously purchased is the only brand considered, while if the consumer is a passive loyalist, the brand previously purchased may only be one brand among several considered for the next purchase.
The consumer decision journey may not be groundbreaking research, since many in the marketing world would likely agree that this model simply affirms what has already been known, or at least surmised to be true, for some period of time but just never substantiated. The linear, sequential, narrowing funnel which has traditionally been used to explain consumer decisions never really captured accurately the consumer purchasing process. It should not be a surprise then that embracing this cyclical model, however, means that developed marketing strategies and their respective executions generated based on the traditional funnel model must be adapted to the way consumers are actually going through the buying process.
McKinsey research found that, "Two-thirds of the touchpoints during the active-evaluation phase involve consumer-driven activities such as Internet reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family". The influence of online communities, social media sites, etc. have significant consumer influence. The choice between brands does not typically narrow, as the traditional process advances. In the active-evaluation phase the much more trusted opinions of other consumers weigh heavily compared to advertising and marketing efforts made by companies.
Despite the many strong foundational affirmations expressed by the McKinsey research, that is not to say that all of it should be taken at face value. For example, we might want to question the notion that consumer decisions are only made at the store, as advanced by the model. That may be true in many cases, but it might be argued that some consumer decisions in terms of the selection of a brand to purchase is made prior to actual purchase in the store. So, the pervasive question that arises is: Does this new model truly capture the consumer decision journey, or is it simply a better model than what we have histoically used?