McKinsey Report Overview

The article focuses on the journey of the consumer as they move through the decision making process and how marketers should change their strategies to keep up with changing times and consumer attitudes. It states that the outdated funnel analogy has changed to a more of a circular journey. It goes on to say that marketers have to be more aggressive and learn how to influence their consumers during each stage of the consumer decision journey.

McKinsey writes, “Faced with a plethora of choices and communications, consumers tend to fall back on the limited set of brands that have made it through the wilderness of messages.” It is difficult for products to make it through that “wilderness of messages” and be easily recognized. Being recognized means making it into the initial-consideration set, and according to the article, a product is almost three times more likely to ultimately be purchased than a product that is not in it. In order to stand out more to consumers, companies need not to “push” to consumers as much, but rather to allow and help consumers “pull” the information that will influence them to buy the company’s products. McKinsey’s research shows that “two-thirds of the touch points during the active evaluation phase involve consumer-driven marketing activities”. The article says that by creating a positive post-purchase experience, you gain more loyal customers who will spread positive word of mouth about your company and more than likely be return customers.

McKinsey describes two types of loyalty in the article, active loyalty and passive loyalty. Active loyalists “not only stick with it [the brand] but also recommend it”. Passive loyalists “stay with a brand without being committed to it”. Passive loyalists can be persuaded to change brands, if they’re given a good reason by competitors. What this does is it presents an opportunity to marketers to take competitors passively loyal customers and it also challenges them to find ways to make their own loyalists actively loyal.

The report suggests several things to marketers if they want to keep up with the changes in the decision making processes of their consumers. Marketers must gain a thorough understanding of the new consumer making process. They then need to use that knowledge to reach consumers at every stage of the decision making process by influencing consumer-driven marketing, improving the in-store experience and product packaging, creating programs to gain active loyalists, and connecting all “customer-faced” areas of the company so they can work together under one manager who can be considered the “voice of the consumer”.

Quoted McKinsey Quarterly; The consumer decision journey