We have to thank Gerard O’Neill, Chairman of the Amarach Group for pointing us to two items of particular interest. We’ll cover the first one here – the make up of the modern consumer and what are there demands. The second, the potential of the over 50s market, will be covered in a later post following the Turning Silver into Gold Conference tomorrow in Kilmainham.

IBM’s Institute for Business Value has produced a research  surveying more than 30,000 consumers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Brazil, India and China to determine how they choose where to shop, what shopping methods they prefer and what they will demand from retailers in the future. While Ireland is not covered specifically it would be foolish to imagine we are so different.

Consumers are getting smarter as they incorporate new technologies into their daily lives and information becomes more readily available. In IBM language, consumers are becoming more “instrumented”, “interconnected” and “intelligent”.

Today’s consumer knows:

• which retailers have the best prices and products
• how they (the consumer) want to interact with both retailers and other consumers
• what matters most to them as they decide where to shop
• which retailers need to improve
• where they want to spend their money.

To the question, what’s most important to you when deciding where to shop and what areas do you feel retailers need to improve upon the most, the answers were, in this order:

The good news is that smarter consumers are not only more demanding, they are also more willing to collaborate. They are ready to contribute to the development of new products and services and will reward those retailers that listen by giving them more of their spend.

If you have the time, the IBM Executive Summary is available for download here and the full version here.