Marigold’s Consumer Trends Index highlights brand expectations for 2023

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In today’s digital landscape, consumers have quickly become the driving force of how businesses conduct their marketing and customer-facing operations. As such, it is essential that brands stay abreast of consumer expectations in order to keep up with the changing times.

To help marketers navigate consumers’ changing viewpoints, Marigold – the newly relaunched global relationship marketing pioneer (formerly CM Group) – recently released new research that uncovers what consumers expect from the brands they do business with online, the channels they want to connect on for more personalised experiences. The 2023 Consumer Trends Index data also uncovers the formats, services, and behaviours customers expect from brands in advance of a potential recession.

According to the new 2023 Consumer Trends Index, there are several key elements that drive consumer satisfaction when conducting business with a brand online.

Among the findings:

  • Consumers are concerned about global economic uncertainty, with 60 per cent very pessimistic about both the rising cost of living and the economic outlook. Half of consumers are making less impulsive purchases with most doing more research (50 per cent), waiting for sales (47 per cent) and relying on loyalty benefits (46 per cent).
  • Email remains the most effective channel for driving sales, with over half of consumers (52 per cent) purchasing a product directly as a result of an email they received in the past year, a 4 per cent uplift on last year, and 108 per cent higher than both SMS and banner ads.
  • Brand loyalty is on the rise, with 59 per cent of consumers prepared to pay more to purchase from their preferred brands. But a third of consumers have switched away from a favoured brand in the past year, citing a poor loyalty program, the online customer experience and data privacy issues as core problems.
  • Most consumers want to receive personalised content and offers from trusted brands and will readily share personal data in return. However, consumers prefer brands that use data explicitly shared directly with the brand. A sizable 61 per cent of consumers feel cookie-fuelled ads are a creepy marketing tactic and definitely not cool.

“There’s been more disruption and transformation in consumer behaviour in the last three years than in the last two decades, with more on the way as a global recession looms on the horizon,” said Tim Glomb, VP of content at Marigold. “Marketers worldwide looking to increase revenue and establish long-term relationships with customers have a challenging few years ahead of them. The 2023 Consumer Trends Index is designed to arm them with the insights needed to better understand this changing landscape, the challenge, and hopefully a few solutions.”

These findings illustrate just how important it is for marketers responsible for managing customer relationships to remain up-to-date on consumer expectations regarding digital interactions with brands. By staying abreast of these trends, businesses will be able to create an optimal customer experience across all channels – both online and off – and continue fostering strong relationships with those who matter most—their loyal customers.

Download the free report from Marigold here.

  • Methodology: The 2023 Consumer Trends Index builds on insights from previous years and helps understand the latest consumer trends. The insights are based on responses from 6800 surveyed consumers across six markets (Australia & New Zealand, France, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US). The responses cover a nationally representative sample in each market across age and gender and includes responses from consumers representing different household income bands. The data was collected over October-November 2022.