Today’s businesses – whether online or occupying physical space – are being tasked with anticipating, adjusting, and adapting to a greater frequency of change than ever before. 

The market constantly changing, and companies have to deal with not only workplace diversity but the diversity of their customer’s needs as well. The market is in continuous flux due in part to an increase in global competition, the rapid development of technologies, and due to the fast-changing priorities, habits, and expectations of today’s consumer.

In this short article, we are going to take a closer look at today’s consumers, what are their expectations, priorities, and habits, and how businesses are adapting their products and their marketing and sales strategies accordingly.

The Profile of Today’s Consumer

First and foremost, it is important to state that there is an incredible amount of diversity in what we could call today’s consumer. However, for our purposes, we are going to take a look at what consumers want, the buying habits, preferences, and priorities that make up the fastest-growing segment of the market (which isn’t necessarily the biggest segment but is likely to soon be) which we have named “today’s consumer”.

Today’s consumer is very comfortable with – some would argue reliant on – technology. They use smartphones and online platforms to socialize, entertain, job search, work, and consume. The prevalence of technology in everyday life means today’s consumer has certain expectations that didn’t exist 20 or 30 years ago:

• 24/7 access – Today’s consumer expects to be able to make a purchase whenever they want.
• A simple purchasing and delivery process – Today’s consumer is accustomed to receiving satisfaction with a simple click of a button. Businesses, in response, need to have a variety of online payment and delivery options available.
• Limited choice – It may seem counterintuitive at first, but more doesn’t always mean better. Today’s consumer leans more toward a more binary, yes or no, way of thinking when it comes to their purchases. A large variety of choices when it comes to colors, sizes, models, etc, may have been a big selling point years ago, but today it only serves to complicate the purchasing process. We can see this tendency to want to reduce options and break down the choice into its simplest components in all aspects of life.

Identity and Self-Expression Through Product Purchases

We used to say, “You are what you eat.” Today, it has become, “You are what you buy.” There have been numerous studies to show and explain this phenomenon – such as the study by Morgan A. Ilaw for the Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications.

Brands and the individual products that are sold under a given brand have become more than items to make the lives of consumers easier or better. They have now become a means of self-expression for the consumer.

The purchases they make affirm or validate a lifestyle they have chosen. The brands and the products they consume allow them to associate or identify with other like-minded people who use the products they’ve also purchased.

Demographics Do Not Equate to Identity

For a long time, companies relied on their marketing and market research departments to identify who their target consumers might be. And the data they received back as an answer was always presented in terms of demographics – how old the target consumer is, educational background, ethnicity, etc. In a world that is embracing diversity (some segments of the world more so than others), this way of thinking and attempting to understand a company’s target consumer seems a bit antiquated.

What matters more than those outdated metrics are lifestyle, values, and habits. Studies and experience have shown us the benefits of diversity in the workplace. This further goes to show us that what brings us together and allows us to create, build, and grow together is not anything that can be quantified or categorized with demographics.

Who Identifies with Your Product?

Instead of thinking in terms of age, location, ethnicity, etc. think about your target consumer in terms of lifestyle, values, and habits.

Lifestyle

• Does your target consumer live life on the go, constantly on the move?
• Does he or she prioritize comfort over taking risks for a potentially new experience?

Values

• Does your target consumer identify with social, political, or environmental causes?
• Does he or she prioritize fitting in over standing out?

Habits

• Does your target consumer make regular purchases of similar products?
• Does he or she spend on impulse or make purchases in bulk?

Marketing Pitches a Lifestyle

After decades and decades of testing what works on prospective consumers and what does not, after billions and billions of dollars spent on market research to create the best possible advertising campaigns, when we see commercials on television or video ads on social media, what is the thing we see most often? Not how the product works – often there is very little mention of the product – but rather what we see is a lifestyle.

Beer is sold by showing attractive people walking on a beach; life insurance is sold by showing families at a barbecue; the latest smartphone is sold by showing a user flying through a colorful urban backdrop; the ads are meant to show us a lifestyle – either one we currently identify with or one that we aspire to lead.

The next time you’re watching TV, count how many advertisements tell you much about the product versus those that aim to sell you a lifestyle. Chances are high that the comparison won’t be close.

What lifestyle fits with your product? How would you show the lifestyle that your product is meant to identify with?

The Bottom Line

Today’s consumer has different values, priorities, and habits than consumers of the past. The incredible boom in consumer technology we’ve experienced over the last 20 years also means that today’s consumer has different expectations too.

Today’s consumer expresses their identity, their allegiance, their values, and priorities through their purchases, thus branding is essential these days. They want to buy products that will affirm or confirm who they want to project themselves to be.

Successful businesses are adapting not only their sales and marketing strategies accordingly, but they are also designing and selling products that aim to meet these new expectations from the consumer.

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