Tomorrow's Consumer

Is market research all about doing a group in Chandigarh, Hubli, Asansol (to get the regional flavour), mix of marred women n men , of the right age........."Getting the right person".or is it also about "predicting trends - seeing the future". A brilliant article published in Brand Equity (originally in Guardian) which says that most of the consumers on the net create identities which maybe diametrically opposite of theirs - so while we may think internet (as a media) wherein you can target the person accurately - and hence get the maximum mileage, the reality might just shock us........But read how an Apparel Company is actually taking advantage of this Jekyl & Hyde nature of the online segment to sell it's product...............

Web of deciept:

From the assumed privacy of an internet search to actively assuming a different persona, most people who use the internet are interested in the obscurity it brings. And, for marketers in this space, this brings new and interesting challenges, because as the digital environment grows, people are increasingly not who they say they are.

So who is the real you? The survey questionnaire you fill in? Your Acorn classification? The person your partner knows? Or is it better defined by your online behaviour?

User 98523 (not her real number) is pregnant. She is currently shopping for living-room furniture, shoes and a new mobile phone. Her partner has bipolar disorder, uses cocaine and abuses her. She is thinking about emigrating to Australia. She is one of the thousands of AOL users whose search data was released on the internet last month, and it is a fascinating insight into the private life of the consumer. It is unlikely she declares much of this publicly, but online, her behaviour reflects the underlying issues in her life - and this is more likely to reflect her real personality than anything she will tell a focus group.

Online behaviour goes much further than merely concealing the true identity of the user. Multiplayer online games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft attract millions of users, each adopting an on-screen persona and living out an alternative existence in cyberspace. As developing technology enables more immersive environments, they are becoming a growing area of internet use. Second Life is a trading economy - you can earn and spend money in the game, and convert your earnings into US dollars - even using a real-world cash machine to withdraw it. And as this economy has grown, real-world firms have started to take an interest.

American Apparel, the US clothing line, has opened a store in Second Life selling virtual clothes. Starwood Hotels is opening a hotel, and Suzanne Vega recently held a concert there. This might seem the stuff of nerds, but at the time of writing, £188,824 had been spent the previous day on Second Life. So, there are people who act differently online and there are people who have completely different lives online to their �real� world lives. This is an increasingly pervasive trend - a survey in 2001 reported that 24% of teenagers in chat rooms said they had pretended to be someone else. A Canadian survey in 2005 claimed 60% of students pretended to be someone else online.

This means a significant chunk of your audience is spending time being someone else, which is rather disconcerting if you are in the business of communicating with people. Marketers like to put people in boxes. They are 16-24, they are male, they are AB. But here is a bunch of people not just climbing out of boxes, but pretending they are in completely different ones. It has always been the job of the planner to use consumer insight to form strategy. If the consumer is pretending to be someone else, it is going to be much trickier to discover what they want. If you were ever in any doubt as to why media and account planning were worthwhile pursuits, now is the time to take interest.

As choice and diversity have flooded the consumerÂ?s world, both in products and media, understanding what drives people to navigate certain paths is becoming an increasingly crucial skill. And if this trend continues, this understanding is going to be harder to obtain, and more valuable by the day.