Brands Need To Come Across As Useful In Order To Hold Onto Consumers

According to a new piece of research from Digital Dopamine, the concept of brand loyalty has fluctuated wildly with the advent of digital, with consumers now looking for useful information and rewards from brands as opposed to interesting tit-bits, Warc reports.

The research questioned over 1,680 online consumers from a select few markets across the globe (the UK, US, Brazil and China) on how digital technology affects the relationship between a consumer and a brand.

One of the key takeaways from the report was that individuals are becoming increasingly keen to avoid any form of advertising; over 50% of those questioned from the UK and US said they try to avoid advertising altogether, along with 69% of those from China. It seems that no matter how amusing a piece of advertising is, it is no longer enough to hold people’s attention – and if the same ad is shown across multiple platforms, the likelihood is that it will actually begin to annoy consumers.

The usefulness of a brand was found to be more important than a brand being interesting in China and the US, with 88% and 86% from each region stating so respectively. In Brazil and the UK an interesting brand was preferred by 81% and 79%, respectively.

A brand was classified as being useful if it made life easier for the consumer in some way, or offered some form of value exchange. Over three-quarters of those questioned from each region believed that a brand’s ability to make their life easier was very important. Adverts were tolerated by the majority of those questioned if there was some form of value exchange at the end of it, for example access to free online content