Creativity Unearthed!

One of the recent trends that was identified by PSFK in The Future of Retail Report is – “Shopper as an Affiliate“. Companies now are trying to turn their customers into affiliates aka evangelists. PSFK Consulting team finds that brands and firms are focusing on their most influential customers in order to help them promote and sell their products. This trend encourages firms to find appropriate tools to monitor the community and pick out their most influential group of customers.

Companies rolls out different strategies through its customers in order to increase its sales:

1.) Referral program -When you refer a friend to Groupon, a $10 will be credited to your account when your friend purchase the coupon successfully. GlossyBox offers incentives in points when you refer a friend on a purchase.

2.) Customers’ Interaction – Company like 500 friends partner with retailers to engage customers in their brands. Their aim is to turn these shoppers to loyal customers then to brand advocates. People on 500 friends will fill out surveys, write a review, share or refer their friends to a particular brand. They then earn tokens through their activities and these tokens will enable them to store credits. Also, customers are grouped differently depending on their activities on 500 friends. This will enable brands to target customers separately depending on the group that they fall into.

Challenges – Although separating consumers will enable firms to identify evangelists, there are some downfall to this. How do companies give title to customers? By their interaction such as offering product reviews? or by customer per spending per period? Guidelines as to how customers are treated as VIP / Top Contributors should be clearly stated on the website of the brands in order to avoid any confusion among customers. Customers might feel unfair if they are not given the VIP title when they thought they are qualified for it. Thus, firms have to be cautious when grouping customers in order to be fair to everyone.

3.) Monitoring Customers on Social Media – Customers are now sharing the products that they bought on social media channels such as blogs or Youtube. Youtube is now a platform for customers to do their “shopping hauls – a video on products that you buy”. Shopping hauls are more specific to women and the products that are shared are normally cosmetics or clothing items. Companies can leverage the influence of these online community to help promote their brands.

Challenges – The challenges for this is the “genuity” in the haul videos. Would consumers be attracted to “haul videos” that are sponsored by a specific brands? Consumers might question the quality and truth of the comments and reviews on the hauls if they know that the shopper is sponsored by the brand. Companies will have to find a tactful way to get their brand out from these social media channels and avoid being questioned the truth of these product reviews from the consumers.