Changing Consumer Behaviour During Indian Festive Season

How has consumer behavior changed during the festive season in the post-pandemic era, as compared to what was before? 

The festive season will see two different emotions in the minds of consumers. On one hand, it would be a feeling of nostalgia - which means the consumers are likely to relive the last year's 'Covid' Diwali in their minds and that would emotionally charge them to enjoy this post-pandemic Diwali to the fullest. On the other hand, an opposing force i.e. hedonic adaptation is playing. This hedonic adaptation kicks in when we get used to the enjoyment of an experience at hand. As Covid has receded in the past few months, consumers are enjoying the post-pandemic experience for a few months now. That also means the 'new' experience of a post-pandemic Diwali is not likely to be different from a Diwali in the pre-covid area.

One thing that we need to keep in mind is that consumer behavior is also a function of external stimuli and retailers and e-commerce platforms are going all out to entice the consumers to come out and purchase, by offering discounts and attractive deals. My understanding is that consumers will purchase in large volumes this Diwali but these purchases won't be driven by impulse but by careful analysis of deals and discounts.

In the digital era, how have technological advancements impacted consumers and the way they engage with brands and their advertisements through various mediums? 

Technological advancements impact consumers, brands, and advertisements in the following ways:-

a. Consumers: The advent of D2C platforms has led users to engage, search and discover part of their purchase decision-making at both the brand and the brand's competitors' platforms. Compare this with a retail setting in the pre-technology era, when the consumer will search and discover only in the retail setting of their favorite shopkeeper. This implies that the consumers are less sticky, have lower consumer lifetime values, and are likely to court other brands simultaneously while purchasing your brand's offerings.

b. Brands: With the advent of data, brands can now personalise and target individuals with customised offerings to them. Not only personalised services and products, but brands can also target individuals with personalised discounts, suggestions, and recommendations.

c. Advertisers: Advertisers are leveraging first-party and third-party data to micro-target consumers across devices and platforms. With new privacy and data protection laws emerging, cookies (used to track consumers across devices and platforms), advertising is now becoming more of a science than just an art, as advertisers need to figure out the identity of users across devices and platforms (for consistent targeting) along with correctly attributing the success metrics to a particular ad.

These are times of short human attention span. With social media platforms like Instagram, and Youtube focussing on short-length videos of 15-30 seconds, how would it impact the way advertisements are targeting audiences now?

There are two ways. From the content perspective: Storytelling through advertising has to be crisp, emotion-evoking, and more engaging than ever. From the length perspective: Consumers are interested in shorter-length video advertisements and influencer marketing content. A concept envisaged by Stanford Professor, Nalini Ambadi, "Thin Slices of Life" explains this phenomenon. By thin slices of life, she suggested that humans form judgments on the basis of the first few seconds of interaction with an advertisement, person, or brand. This is followed by the shorter attention spans of the consumers, and therefore, consumers are all the more looking for quick hits of dopamine from the brands in the form of advertisements.

With increased internet penetration and the amalgamation of cultures across boundaries, do you think the emotional aspect of advertisements would still hold relevance? 

Always - The only thing that will change is the reason behind the emotions evoked. More than the cultural aspects, the storyline, pace of the advertisement, content, and contextual factors (e.g. emotional incongruence of videos and corresponding content) will dictate the emotions and feelings of the consumers towards the brand communication.

With the concept of the Metaverse getting significant increasingly, would advertisements also require increased consumer engagement in the virtual space? How long can conventional advertisement modals survive in today's age?

We are already living in the metaverse by immersing ourselves in our phones all day. Meanwhile, the impact of the metaverse on the ads can be answered through two perspectives: Short term and long-term. A short-term view means the consumers will be at both the mediums i.e. in the real world as well as the metaverse. In the longer term, consumers will be spending more time than ever in the metaverse, the conventional advertising mediums have to evolve as it won't still be possible to live in the metaverse 24 hours a day. Two things to keep in mind: The duration of short-term and long-term is still hazy as this will depend on the cost of AR/VR headsets, the development of the advertising ecosystem on Metaverse with the adoption rate of Metaverse. Secondly, brands should keep an eye on the metaverse. Economically better off and young audiences are likely to adopt Metaverse faster than the other consumers.

What do you predict about consumer behaviour patterns and the advertisement industry in the coming times? Any projections? 

A few projections: (1) Content and contextual advertising are going to be the key to effective advertising. (2) Shorter and dopamine-inducing ads are likely to work more effectively. (3) Privacy awareness and data protection regulations are likely to impact the targeting criterion of advertisers in a big way. (4) Omnichannel marketing will be effective. (5) Lastly, rising customer acquisition costs and expensive social media advertisements will make the attribution of the purchase to the ads more and more important.