• by Ray Schultz , November 9, 2021

Recovery is in the air, judging by Experian’s Global Insights Report, a study released Tuesday. But there has been a falloff in loyalty, with 61% of consumers sticking with brands they used before the pandemic, a decline of 6% from last year.  

Of businesses polled worldwide, 59% say they’ve mostly or completely rebounded from the pandemic. The number is highest in the U.S. (97%) and lowest in Brazil (43%). 

And, 47% of consumers say their household economy is completely recovered -- an increase of 8% over a year ago. Once again, the U.S. leads (with 56%) and Brazil at the bottom of the roster (with 28%). Almost 10% say they are spending more and putting less away in retirement or emergency savings.  

Online marketers have new opportunities, given these shifts. But there also are risks, the study says. 

“Dwindling customer loyalty along with heightened customer expectations and increased competition could mean potential revenue loss or gain,” states Steve Wagner, global managing director of decision analytics for Experian.

Consumers seek security (82%), privacy (77%) and convenience (74%) when shopping online. But 42% are increasingly concerned about online safety.

Still, 56% of shoppers will share their contact information for a better experience and 42% will provide personal information. And get this: 75% feel the most secure using physical biometrics.  

Moreover, 49% conduct regularly conduct personal banking and payment activities online. “The increase in digital activity has remained persistent, and consumers are staying online even with the return of physical shopping and banking,” Wagner notes. 

For their part, brands are rapidly adding high-tech tools. For instance, 74% have now adopted artificial intelligence (AI), up from 69% in 2020, and 73% have deployed machine learning (ML), versus 68% last year.  

When conducting cloud-based credit risk decisioning, 81% are more confident in advanced analytics, and 81% feel the same about on-demand, cloud-based decisioning. 

Moving forward, 76% of firms are improving or rebuilding their analytics models, 50% are exploring new data sets and 65% are boosting their fraud detection budgets (up from 8% in 2020). And 60% will hike their budgets for credit risk analytics. 

Experian surveyed 3,000 consumers and 900 businesses across the U.S., Brazil, U.K., Germany, Spain, India, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Italy in September 2021.