Modern Customer
Demystifying A Modern Customer: Evolutionary Change
By Patrick Maninga
A customer refers to a clientele, consumer or a purchaser for a particular product or service. Many theories, some practical while some have been attained out of dogma, tend to explain how the customers at large behave in the market for a product while relating to others in the same or different markets. I tend to dive and understand not just a customer at large and based on their purchasing pattern but also to relook and demystify how the evolvement of customers for our products has been to the level of a modern consumer. Freakonomics states that no statistical data can be used to explain customers behavior as human behavior is controlled by incentives say social, economic, political, environment and even personal.
Through this work, I collate different ideas on what I have written about customer behavior in the past and Dr. Wale Akinyemi’ s talk on the modern customer and seek to build on this by elaborating further through documentation on who a modern customer is.
There has been evolvement in needs and dynamics have changed leading to changes in patterns, reasoning and generally, how customers behave in the market. This behavior has at times placed businesses at loggerheads with customers due to misunderstanding to an extend of creating crisis and chaos for the brands involved.
In other words, a customer of today is not a customer of yesterday and this customer will not operate the same tomorrow in the market hence the need to dive deeper and bring out a closer understanding of who the customer of today is. The key fundamental economic question is,“ For Whom?” and for this, here is your modern customer- a customer of today:
Deal Seeker
A modern customer is not just attracted to your product for the look and feel only, but for what is in it for that customer.
The template that worked magic, grew brands and drove sales revenue through the traditional customer may not work to drive growth through the modern customer- neither can this work out in the entirety for the future generation of customers.
This customer is in search for the best product in terms of attributes and quality at the best price. The utility to be derived from this product for this customer is in the value proposition this product offers hence to attract such a customer, the product must not only match the price to the quality, but the quality needs to exceed the price to place the brand at a competitive advantage in the market. The modern customer in pursuit of deal seeking may not mind leaving a brand at the doorstep to hop far away and purchase competing brands just to maximize utility.
Trust Deficit
Globally, and at an international level, the modern customer is being faced with a leadership crisis coupled with destructive capitalism and information asymmetry in different fields say economics, politics, medicine, agriculture and international trade at large has led to trust deficit amongst the modern customers. Due to this information asymmetry and even little to lack of product knowledge, this consumer is in search of a brand that can be trusted to become a household generational brand.
With unfavorable socioeconomic and political policies that many at times have become unpopular and detrimental to the modern customers, by brands siding with oppressive regimes to curtail information symmetry as well as the silence of brands at the hour of need instead of being in solidarity through their campaigns, the modern customers have had to always consider the alternatives of the said brands
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