TODAY’s consumer experience with a brand is as much digital as it is physical, and building bonds with consumers phygitally is becoming quite an art. In the furniture domain this phy-gital mode of experiencing is throwing up several opportunities for marketers. H S Manikandan, chief sales and marketing officer at Pidilite Industries, explains how furniture brands can use this trend to bond with the customer.
The way a consumer experiences a brand’s product or service is going through massive transformation. What used to be experienced physically is now happening digitally, and increasingly in a hybrid manner.
In the context of furniture, earlier a product could be seen only by visiting a showroom, but now it’s possible to visualise it from all angles on a mobile device. Not just that, colour options, size variations and even combinations with visual merchandise can be seen without having to step out of the house. That’s digital experience. As is when the customer selects and places an order online, pays for the order digitally, and tracks delivery on the mobile till the time it is installed.
The entire journey of consumers from discovery to consideration to fulfillment, that transcends display, delivery, and installation, is a mix of physical and digital; it’s building bonds with consumers phygitally.
This transformation of the brand experience is both, a challenge as well as opportunity. And how marketers address it will determine their success in the hyper competitive phygital environment.
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Whether a challenge or opportunity, here are some critical issues that should be addressed.
Brand Promise
THE more widely a brand is accessible to the consumer, the more it needs to remain true to its promise. Brand promise is a commitment made by a company to its customers, describing the value and experience they can expect when using its products or services.Â
IKEA’s brand promise is ‘we will create a better everyday life for the many people’.
Pidilite’s brand promise is ‘as a customer-centric company … we are dedicated to making products and solutions that offer lifelong reliability’.
In a purely physical world, the moments of truth for a brand used to be few and far between. However, in the phygital world there are several micro events or engagements between the brand and consumer that could become moments of truth. Such micro events occur every time the consumer calls up or visits the brand’s Insta page, be it for inquiry, comparison, ideation, validation, purchase or follow up.
If they want to be continuously building bonds, brand owners must ensure that their promise gets delivered to the consumer at every moment of truth.
With each engagement, the chances of strengthening or diminishing the brand promise increase. Consistency is the bedrock; it is the key for brand success.
Co-creation
WHAT was once a binary dialogue between brand and the consumer has transformed into an animated and emotional conversation.
In a physical world the brand showed the product and fulfilment options, and the consumer decided whether to accept the offer or not.
But today is the era of personalisation. Brands must encourage conversations that allow customers to share their preferences and limitations. When this is done well, the decisions are joint at almost every stage of the transaction, be it product design, material selection and warranty durations, payment methods, delivery destinations and timelines, and even frequencies of post-sales support. When customers are part of the creation process, they readily take ownership of the final result.
Co-creation is a conversation not just between brand and the consumer, but also amongst consumers when they share what they have created with friends and family to get validation. The process of ordering a modular kitchen is a good example. It is co-creation of the brand experience. Here too there are possibilities of failing or succeeding beyond the customer’s expectations. When brands consistently live up to their promise even during the journey of co-creation, they can achieve superlative success.
Feedback
WHAT the consumer thinks of the brand, irrespective of whether she is a customer or not, is what marketers would die to know. Phygital allows brand owners to seek out the consumers’ views on every possible occasion.
The process of co-creation itself is a fantastic opportunity for getting feedback. Such feedback not only gets affirmation from the customer at every stage, but also enables the mining of their tastes and preferences for next stages of the transaction.
It is important to note that if feedback is not sought proactively, dissatisfied customers may feel frustrated and voice their opinion publicly and in unpalatable forms. To avoid such situations, mature marketers create processes to channelise the feedback in a timely, positive, and constructive manner. In fact, co-creation of feedback itself is an art that successful brands leverage, where they make heroes out of their customers.
Omnichannel Existence
BRANDS will henceforth have to exist on various channels of communication, both physical and digital, simultaneously. More importantly, their promises and commitments to consumers will always have to be fully aligned. It cannot be that an offer shown on the website is not updated at the physical point of sale. The phygital world makes it imperative for communication teams to visualise all the possible places of engagement with the consumer and carry the brand promise throughout.
Pidilite’s Genie app for dealers is a fine example of how brands can bond with their customers in a phygital world. Genie is a digital assistant that offers channel partners the facility to view schemes, place orders, track their loyalty points and credit notes, and guidance about using its various products.
The Fevicol SWR Max adhesive is a fast-setting solution that is backed by an innovative digital service for furniture OEMs. Through this online service, customers can calculate the time they have saved in production, and the electricity consumption reduced by way of faster production. This is an example of being true to the brand promise by increasing the functionality of the product.
CURATING a phygital brand experience for the consumer is a challenge to the marketer’s creativity. It is a never-ending rollercoaster of building bonds. And the rewards can be enormous for the brave who venture into uncharted territories.