Consumer expectations have changed because of the easy access to information they have at their fingertips through smart phones. In 2012 the Cooperate Executive Board did a survey of seven thousand consumers in thirty different countries. The research and insights firm wanted to know what influence product content had over purchasing decisions and came up with the Decision Simplicity Index which measures how easy it to obtain and understand accurate information about a product. Though cell phone technology has been around for some time Ken Sickles believes that there is a first mover advantage. The CEB Survey concludes that brands in the top 25% of the DSI are 86% more likely to be purchased, 90% more likely to be repurchased, and 115% more likely to be recommended.
At The 2016 BLUE Users Conference Vice President of 1WorldSync Ken Sickles introduced a growing partnership with BLUE in a brisk presentation about the future of ecommerce. 1WorldSync streamlines data from wherever it might be in your enterprise (from PIM to PLM systems) so you can reuse that information for transparency initiatives, marketplaces, digital catalogues, sales aids, and data feeds for retailer item setups like for Amazon Alexa. There are no limits to what you can do with this content once you aggregate data and have a method of distribution.
The goal is to have a continuous stream of fresh data in front of consumers as often as possible, as marketing has become completely content driven. Half of purchases are influenced by buyer interactions online doing consumer research. Consumer expectations have skyrocketed since the creation of smartphones and other growing technologies like conversational commerce- a term used to describe the rise of voice and text as user interface mechanisms such as Amazon Alexa and Siri. 1WorldSync can harness all of the content used to create a package within Blue Software so that information can be used to comply with the regulatory standards of Smart Label, and find out how to use its contents in a way that Siri would be able to access the caloric, ingredient or allergen information of your product.
Another example of industry standards moving towards an increasingly digital format is Smart Label. Smart Label is an industry initiative for consumer packaged good manufacturers lead by the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association that takes the contents of your packaging labels and puts then into a consistent online format. Just as there are standards on physical packaging we are also beginning to see those same standards become digitized.
Last year in-store retail was down, and the only way retail as a whole made a profit was because of the expansion of digital commerce. Though ecommerce sales currently only make up around roughly 10% of retail profit there is room for tremendous growth, Ken Sickles warns that a lack of preparation for the expansion of this market will have adverse long term affects. The key, he explains, is “reducing decision complexity” by creating a frictionless user interface to increase ease of purchase, along with a personalized experience. It also needs to be portable so websites should be reformatted to run smoothly on handheld devices along with being social, meaning it takes into account the customers online friends taste and preferences as well.
Product content is so vital to the industry that is is starting to drive commerce, transparency, and compliance regulatory standard. Ken Sickles suggests that content is going to be as important to the enterprise as consumer data was a decade and a half ago, as we are sitting at the epicenter of a brand new industry.
Stay tuned to find what 1World Sync is doing with BLUE for its benefits and the additional return on your investment through our joint software.
Watch the video of Ken Sickles complete BLUE User Conference Presentation “Content and the Connected consumer” in its entirety (21 mins).
