Commentary
Wavemaker Finds Consumers Becoming Less Attached To Brands, Especially Online
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, June 21, 2021
The erosion of brand equity has been a
constant force as the number of brands and consumer options have proliferated over time, and as many leading brands have shifted their focus from building long-term brand equity to boosting short-term
sales. But some startling new research from GroupM's Wavemaker unit reveals …
2 comments about "Wavemaker Finds Consumers Becoming Less Attached To Brands, Especially Online".
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Joe Mandese is the Editor in Chief of MediaPost. You can reach Joe at joe@mediapost.com.
There are a host of questions that would reveal what kinds of dependencies these findings might be subjected to. What were the brands under scrutiny? 50% more brand exposure might lead to original brand choice being bumped, but how often? And even thiough this was a 2-year study, can we assume 14 months of those 24 months were impacted by COVID-19, do we feel this study is genuinely clean? A better, if unintended, outcome of this study could be the impact that working from home has on patterns of purchase.
Much of what consumer brand marketers was certain was brand awareness/salience/preference/loyalty etc etc was actually a combination of:
All of those factors are in steep structural decline, while manufacturing is now easiy sourced online, clout is radically diffused (count the number of Facebook advertisers vs the number of Olympics advertsiers), and a radically expanded set of choices.
Products that are good enough ("hmm, seems like something I may need" plus "I never heard of it, but the reviews are all solid") at a reasonably low price ("it's really not worth searching for a better option" will do well in this new environment. Big brands that have been quietly ratcheting down value and quietly ratcheting up prices for decades are at serious risk.