A new type of consumer is emerging, EBEA head says

“The consumer and not the product is now at the center of commercial strategy,” Ken Hughes, an expert on matters of consumer behaviour and experience said addressing the “The Future of Commerce” event organized by the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry EBEA.

Hughes noted that the metaverse will include almost all the operations of the physical world, changes will be constant, with personalization and interaction being the dominant trends in commercial transactions “where everyone addresses electronic devices for any questions”. He added that commercial companies must be flexible and easily adaptable to the future becoming more customer-oriented.

Sofia Kounenaki Efremoglou, president of EBEA, in her opening speech said that “The new social-economic, political and physical environment has brought a new type of consumer to the forefront, combining the behaviours of millennials and the generations X and Z, the emerging consumer king, who spends wisely, selects shops from different sources and through various channels, demands availability, he is willing to experiment and is likely to ignore his dedication to a brand name, influenced from social media and has adopted values related with the environment, variety, equality, participation, transparency, recycling and simplicity”. In other words, she said the consumer -under the impact of technology and climate- claims his role as king, ready to claim his influence through his values, using technology to make it happen. “We do not have a crystal ball to see the future. We can only try to sketch the trends pointing to the future,” she noted.

Ken Hughes said the world was ready for the most disorganized decade in history, living for almost three years in an environment characterized by turbulence, showing us we must forget about normality. The new normality is “never normal!” He refered to the five main consumer value defining commercial policy: -“Blue Dot Consumer”, “Personalization”, “Partnership”, “Digital environment” and “Experience”.

SOURCE; ANA-MPA