Driving purchase decisions

But before we take a look at the contemporary consumer journey, let’s explore some interesting details from the eMarketer and impact.com report  to ensure they make sense in a wider context, starting with what drives purchasing decisions.

Wherever a customer decides to make a purchase, a number of universal drivers can influence their actions. The two big ones are price and value, with product quality (cited by 34.7% of respondents) and price (20%) the foundations of most purchase decisions.

As a result, discounts are seen as a primary purchase driver, with 62.3% of consumers citing them as a key consideration. Secondary purchase drivers include customer reviews (10.7%), brand reputation (8.9%) and product availability (8.3%); social proof, trust and convenience are all hugely important for the customer of today.

Multichannel consideration points

The eMarketer and impact.com research also shows there are a number of key business implications for companies looking to reach consumers in the ever expanding multichannel world, including three particularly critical considerations:

• Attribution. Despite the proliferation of the digital world, 80% of retail dollars are still spent in-store. The problem is, a lot of consumer research is carried out online, which makes tracking a consumer’s journey difficult. This costs brands both important insights and can lead to misaligned marketing campaigns that have to occasionally operate in the dark.
• Channel effectiveness. Consumers consult a wide network of places during the discovery and research phases of their journey, including search engines, social media platforms and retailer websites. This requires brands to be accessible in all of these places, simultaneously understanding which provide the most value in the purchase journey.
• The demographic divide. Consumers of different ages behave very differently, especially across the various income segments, and particularly regarding research patterns. For example, high earners ($250,000 and above) will research a purchase at least five times – much more than lower income brackets. Brands and marketers need to use nuanced segmentation when targeting their audience.

The contemporary customer journey

Now that we understand key drivers and challenges, let’s take a look at how a typical consumer today journeys from discovery to purchase.

Stage one: multichannel discovery

In the first phase of the consumer journey, the sheer quantity of discovery channels poses a challenge for brands and advertisers. While historically there were just a handful of ways to research a purchase, audiences today discover new products almost anywhere, from word-of-mouth to social media and digital video

A study carried out in February 2024 by Jungle Scout suggests that Amazon is the go-to starting point for product discovery, but that search engines, social media platforms, and a host of other digital spaces are playing increasingly prominent roles in introducing new products to consumers constantly.

Stage two: intricate consideration

In the second stage of today’s consumer journey, an intricate consideration phase sees consumers consult multiple digital and traditional touchpoints before moving to a purchase. In fact, the impact.com and eMarketer research suggests consumers refer to websites, in-store experiences, social platforms and word-of-mouth channels more than three times before committing to a transaction. In the digital sphere, search engines (44.3%), branded social (24%) and influencers (18.4%) are the most powerful discovery tools, while print catalogues and mailouts (38.4%) and the opinions of our friends and family (31%) rule the roost for traditional channels.

No two customers are the same, of course, and consumer behavior shows marked differences in research patterns across age and income segments. For example, low-income consumers are more likely to find in-store research experiences helpful, while young, tech-savvy groups will seek online reviews over the opinions of family and friends, suggesting the need for sophisticated segmentation strategies.

Stage three: the purchase phase

Finally, the all-important purchase phase of the contemporary customer journey presents broad, exciting challenges for brands. Some 69% of consumers discover new products weekly, so how can a business convince them to spend finite resources on their products? The situation is complicated further by the fact that consideration and purchase often occur in different channels, but the key is to enable customers to buy in as many places as possible, including where they research. That might be in-store, via social media or on a brand’s website.

Develop your multichannel strategy

First, marketers must acknowledge the contemporary user journey is likely to involve three or more pieces of research over numerous platforms. Brands must continuously produce high-quality content designed for each channel, keep pricing and availability information consistent and offer easy access to authentic reviews, ratings and other supporting tools.

Next, keep in mind the universal drivers of quality and value. These matter to all demographics, but you should tailor marketing efforts for product type and consideration level. For example, high-consideration products are best supported by the likes of detailed education content and expert consultations.

And finally, tackle the complex challenge of successful attribution to build a detailed picture of your customer’s journey. Investing in multi-touch models that will help you join the dots between a customer’s research and purchase will provide important learnings, as will using consumer data to create a unified customer view, allowing brands to trace complex channels via probabilistic modeling.

The marketing funnel has changed, and will continue to do so. Acknowledging these ongoing shifts, and adapting accordingly, is how marketers can stay in consideration in a market that is highly complicated but needn’t be confusing.