Consumers Have High Expectations Of Brands – Are You Meeting Them?

Con­sumers have access to near­ly unlim­it­ed amounts of infor­ma­tion, choice, and ways to engage and inter­act. And they want fast respons­es when brands mess up.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

As busi­ness­es, con­sumer mar­kets, and tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms, around the world become more con­nect­ed, and with retail­ers expand­ing the scale and poten­tial of their inter­na­tion­al activ­i­ties, increas­ing­ly brands are not only com­pet­ing with­in their own ter­ri­to­ries but in a glob­al are­na, where con­sumers com­pare and eval­u­ate deci­sions against a bench­mark of the very best.


Lithi­um Tech­nolo­gies, in part­ner­ship with Har­ris Poll, have con­duct­ed a sur­vey of 6,100 online adults in coun­tries rang­ing from the Unit­ed States, Great Britain, Aus­tralia, France, and Ger­many, ques­tion­ing them on a wide array of top­ics regard­ing their online actions, behav­iors, and atti­tudes. The sur­vey revealed unique insights into what con­sumers from dif­fer­ent regions expect from their online expe­ri­ences, and what they expect from the brands they look to.

From a glob­al per­spec­tive, the sur­vey uncov­ered sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences among glob­al pop­u­la­tions. It revealed that the expec­ta­tions of an Amer­i­can con­sumer, for exam­ple, are dif­fer­ent to those of a French con­sumer. How­ev­er, as the prac­tice of online retail­ers becomes more glob­al­ized, the trend high­lights a need for brands to devel­op a busi­ness offer­ing inline with con­sumers’ high expec­ta­tions.

Rob Tarkoff, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Lithi­um gave the fol­low­ing com­ment in a press release:

We want­ed to gauge how dig­i­tal busi­ness has changed the ways con­sumers inter­act with brands, and explore how those behav­iors dif­fer across geo­graph­i­cal and cul­tur­al bor­ders. We’re liv­ing in an age of extreme expec­ta­tions. Our sur­vey pro­vides insights that brands can use to improve their cus­tomer approach­es to stay rel­e­vant among increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and demand­ing con­sumers.”

Here’s an overview of some key insights from the report.

Online research is the norm among consumers globally before making big purchases

  • Online research is the most impor­tant resource among con­sumers glob­al­ly in prepa­ra­tion for mak­ing big pur­chas­es.
  • The major­i­ty of online con­sumers vis­it an aver­age of three sites before mak­ing high-tick­et pur­chas­es such as jew­el­ry, kitchen appli­ances, or new car, etc.
  • French con­sumers spend the most amount of time con­duct­ing online research, vis­it­ing an aver­age of 3.52 sites before mak­ing a pur­chase.
  • Amer­i­can con­sumers on the oth­er hand do the least online research, vis­it­ing an aver­age of just 2.3 sites before mak­ing a pur­chase.
  • Younger con­sumers (aged 18–44) across all coun­tries, tend to vis­it more sites than those aged 45 and old­er.
  • There is a clear trend toward con­sumers doing a great deal of “research before pur­chase” in favor of “impulse pur­chas­ing.”

A majority of consumers will only call a toll-free number for customer service as the last resort

  • Approx­i­mate­ly two-thirds of Amer­i­can, British, and Aus­tralian con­sumers (67, 67, and 64 per­cent respec­tive­ly) con­sid­er pick­ing up the phone to con­tact cus­tomer ser­vice as a last resort. Con­sumers con­sid­er even a toll-free num­ber for cus­tomer ser­vice as a unde­sir­able means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, pre­fer­ring to use oth­er chan­nels to resolve issues.
  • In Euro­pean coun­tries, 73 per­cent of French adults con­sid­er using the phone for cus­tomers as a last resort, but the pic­ture was much dif­fer­ent in Ger­many, with a sur­pris­ing 46 per­cent of Ger­mans shar­ing the view.
  • Across all coun­tries, younger con­sumers (aged 18–44) were sig­nif­i­cant­ly much more reluc­tant to use the phone to con­tact cus­tomer ser­vices for help of any sort.
  • Instead, con­sumers expect brand web­sites to pro­vide all the infor­ma­tion they could pos­si­bly need to answer their ques­tions, resolve issues, or dis­cov­er more about the prod­ucts and ser­vices they are inter­est­ed in.

Consumers go online to praise as well as complain

  • Only a small per­cent­ages of Amer­i­can, French, and Ger­man con­sumers (39, 34, 27 per­cent respec­tive­ly) post online reviews to com­plain about a prod­uct or ser­vice rather than to praise it, with con­sumers pre­fer­ring to cre­ate online reviews when they’ve had a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence.
  • Find­ings revealed that pos­i­tive “word of mouth” rec­om­men­da­tions were still the most influ­en­tial form of mar­ket­ing.

Positive “word of mouth” still proves to be the most influential form of marketing

  • Around three-quar­ters of Amer­i­can, British, and French con­sumers (73, 76, and 72 per­cent respec­tive­ly) stat­ed that they would­n’t buy some­thing that did­n’t have pos­i­tive online reviews.
  • The feel­ing was slight­ly less pro­nounced among Ger­mans and Aus­tralians with 62 and 68 per­cent of con­sumers stat­ing that they would­n’t buy some­thing that did­n’t have pos­i­tive online reviews.
  • An incred­i­ble 85 per­cent of British con­sumers aged 25–34 stat­ed that they would­n’t buy some­thing with­out pos­i­tive reviews.
  • More than two-thirds of Amer­i­can, British, French, and Aus­tralian con­sumers (68, 69, 67, 67 per­cent respec­tive­ly) said they were most recep­tive to rec­om­men­da­tions on what to buy from fam­i­ly and friends online, rather than online adver­tis­ing.

Consumers heavily rely on recommendations from family and friends on purchase decisions

  • In Ger­many the sen­ti­ment was even high­er with a stag­ger­ing 78 per­cent of Ger­man con­sumers agree­ing that they placed most val­ue on rec­om­men­da­tions from fam­i­ly and friends.
  • Across all coun­tries sur­veyed, more than 70 per­cent of younger con­sumers (aged 18–34) stat­ed that they were more recep­tive to the rec­om­men­da­tions of friends and fam­i­ly over online adver­tis­ing.

Consumers want “instant gratification” from online customer service

  • About two-thirds of Amer­i­can, British, and French con­sumers (66, 67, and 66 per­cent respec­tive­ly) expect a response to their enquiries on the same day, when reach­ing out to a com­pa­ny to trou­bleshoot a prod­uct mal­func­tion or ser­vice issue.
  • Amer­i­can, French, and Aus­tralian con­sumers are the most impa­tient – with more than 40 per­cent of respon­dents say­ing they expect­ed a response with­in just one hour!

New Precedents For Customer Expectations

The report sin­gled out a grow­ing expec­ta­tion from con­sumers for “instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion” in cus­tomer ser­vice and the res­o­lu­tion of com­plaints. The same also applies to con­tent and infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by sites as a means of pro­vid­ing answers for con­sumers.

Today’s con­sumers are empow­ered with near unlim­it­ed amounts of use­ful infor­ma­tion, more choice, and more ways to engage and inter­act with brands. It has giv­en rise to a gen­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal­ly artic­u­late con­sumers, who have devel­oped an extreme­ly high lev­el of expec­ta­tion with regard to what brands are offer­ing.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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