With 166 million Americans shopping for deals, a special episode to coincide with the most important shopping week of the year. Previous guests Doug Stephens, Devora Rogers, Ibrahim Ibrahim, and Ksenia Newton discuss how retail is evolving. We discuss trends in shopping behaviors: the growing importance of social media for brand discovery, logistical challenges facing omnichannel brands, why stores are like media and their potential for re-invention as community spaces.
Episode Transcript
Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS:
Devora Rogers: Shoppers want to be informed and the process of understanding how shoppers do that is through usage and influence.
Doug Stephens: The actual shopping experience itself is, to my mind, the most powerful and manageable – and frankly measurable – form of media that a retailer or a brand possesses.
Ksenia Newton: If an important brand is not aligned with the consumers’ values, consumers may no longer want to shop with them and they’ll go with somebody else, whether it’s more expensive or not.
Ibrahim Ibrahim: What makes great placemaking is this shift from a shopping or transactional rhythm to a community rhythm, and that rhythm of footfall makes a great place.
Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on the business of advertising, produced weekly by Bigeye: a strategy-led, full-service creative agency, growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. I came to live and work in America almost 20 years ago, and it’s been interesting to observe how Black Friday has evolved from a single-day event to an extended long weekend. It now incorporates Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday. And it’s no longer an exclusively American phenomenon. Some members of my family live in Spain – where, in common with many other European countries, retailers aim to get consumers excited about the holiday shopping period with what they call Black Friday Week. Back here in the US, the National Retail Federation estimated that 166 million Americans shopped during the long weekend in physical stores and online. So, to celebrate the most important week of the year for retailers, we’re going to revisit some conversations we’ve had with guests about shopping and consumer behaviors this year.
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Adrian Tennant: Our featured Book Club selection for May was Influencing Shopper Decisions: Unleash The Power Of Your Brand To Win Customers. I was joined by the book’s co-author Devora Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer with the consumer insights research agency, Alter Agents, based in Los Angeles. Devora, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS.
Devora Rogers: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Adrian Tennant: The first chapter of Influencing Shopper Decisions illustrates the impact of digital technologies and how they’ve transformed how many people approach shopping. You also introduce a new framework based on two immutable truths. So Devora, can you explain what led you to determine that usage and influence are key metrics for tracking and revealing today’s shopper journey?
Devora Rogers: Usage and influence became our North Stars, our key metrics, because we began to see that there were so many things that shoppers were doing. They were becoming prolific researchers and literally going everywhere all the time, sometimes for weeks or months on end. And in that process, they’re encountering such a large amount of information, that we felt like it was important that brands know where people were going for information. That’s the usage. And then what of those sources – and our list is about 45 sources plus – actually drive influence, actually cause people to purchase? And you have to separate them, you know, it’s “Did you do it? Did you use it?” And “Was it helpful?” and that today, as a marketer, with brand as a driver of shopper interest and purchase decreasing, what we see is that in place of that is really information. Shoppers want to be informed. And the process of understanding how shoppers do that is through usage and influence. And information is now a kind of value. It’s not enough for a product to be good. It’s not enough for it to be a decent price. When you used to ask shoppers, what made them make the decision that they did, it used to almost always be brand and value, you know, kind of what you paid for the price of the item and was that worth it? And today, both of those are increasingly being replaced by “Did I have the information that made me confident to make a decision?” And so usage and influence capture that shift to what Daniel Pink calls information parity.
Adrian Tennant: The third chapter of your book is The Age Of Shopper Promiscuity, in which you discuss how your research reveals a fundamental change in the way that people shop today, compared to a decade and a half ago. So Devora, what is shopper promiscuity?
Devora Rogers: It almost sounds naughty, right? And in fact, we had originally proposed to our very British publisher that we call the book Shopper Promiscuity and they were very concerned about that as, as a potential name for a book. But what it is is openness. Promiscuity, you know, often we think about it in terms of relationships and sex. But what it has to do with is an openness to things. So a promiscuous reader is somebody that reads everything, they’ll read anything and everything. And that is how it applies to shoppers. Shoppers will consider all kinds of things and they’re not held down by brand. They’re not held down by what they purchased a week ago. They’re willing and able to buy anything that works for them. And today, they have so many choices. Innovation has grown so rapidly. We cite numbers in the book about the rate of innovations and the number of new SKUs that have come out in the past five to 10 years. So they have more choices. There’s more innovation. There’s more accessibility. So yeah, in the same way, if you walked out of your house every day and there were 10 stunning-looking people standing outside, waving at you saying, “Hello, would you love me?” it might be hard to stay loyal to your partner! And it’s sort of the same kind of thing. Every time we go and buy, we have so many choices that are all amazing. And so it has brought shoppers to a place where they are open to anything and everything, and it makes it a much more challenging environment for brands to operate in.
Adrian Tennant: In 2021, your research agency, Alter Agents, undertook a study with over 6,000 recent purchasers examining shopping behaviors in six different categories, designed to reveal how shoppers are making decisions. One of the findings that you share in your book is that shoppers are using more sources of information than ever before when making a purchase decision. So Devora, how is source usage important in understanding the shopper’s path to purchase?
Devora Rogers: It’s incredibly important to understand source usage because the new currency is information. And if information is the currency – and we all are becoming researchers, which over a decade of research has shown us – shoppers are all becoming researchers. You might not do it on everything that you buy, but you’ll do it on a lot more things than our parents were able to do simply because the information wasn’t there and the internet wasn’t there and the mobile phone wasn’t there. So today, information is how people make decisions and they have a lot of information at their fingertips, but for brands it’s really tricky because nobody has infinite marketing budgets. Even the biggest media spender in the world has limits and they have to know where to put their efforts. And so what source usage tells us is where do people go for information? And when do they go for each of those types of information? Are they going online first and then eventually going to the store? Are they going to the store first and then going online? Are they never going to the store or are they listening to a podcast? Are they reading reviews? Are they using TikTok? There’s just so many different places brands could be. And there’s so many places that shoppers are researching. Sometimes when I talk to brands about this, they think, “Oh, this is like marketing mix modeling”. No, it’s about where you’re going to tell your stories and how you’re going to do that in each of these radically different environments. And which of those are going to reach the most people and be most likely to influence them so that they don’t end up going with a competitor who just happens to have more information in a place that that person was looking.
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Adrian Tennant: Doug Stephens is one of the world’s foremost retail industry futurists. As the CEO of Retail Prophet, Doug’s thinking has influenced many of the world’s best-known retailers, agencies, and brands. Doug joined us from his home office in Toronto, Canada to discuss his third book, Resurrecting Retail: The Future of Business in a Post-Pandemic World.
Adrian Tennant: One of the themes in your new book, Resurrecting Retail, is the idea of store as media. Now, as you know, one of the fastest-growing areas of ad placement is in-store media, with retailers including Walmart, Target, and Kroger, creating in-house solutions to offer ad space to CPG brands that they sell. But that’s not what you mean, correct?
Doug Stephens: That’s correct. What I mean is that the actual shopping experience itself is, to my mind, the most powerful and manageable, and frankly measurable form of media that a retailer or a brand possesses. The problem is most of them don’t treat it that way. They don’t treat the experience as a media experience. Historically, as retailers, we’ve gone out to the open market. We’ve bought media, we’ve bought advertising, in an effort to acquire customers, to gather brand recognition or brand awareness. And then if we’re successful in doing that, we move those consumers to a point of distribution or points of distribution to transact sales. The problem is stores are now the media itself and media in many ways is becoming the store. As a consumer now I don’t look at advertising as a mere call-out to go to a store. The advertising is the store. I can buy directly from TikTok, from Facebook, from Instagram, from any piece of media that falls within my grasp. So, many retailers would say, “well, if media is becoming the store, does that negate the necessity for stores?” And my argument is no, not at all, because it’s actually a trading of roles. Physical stores are becoming a very powerful media channel. And I’ll just explain very briefly what I mean by that. We have to sort of start from a place where we accept that the going in premise of effective media is that there is an audience for it. Obviously we want to try and create media experiences, wherever there’s an audience that can enjoy that. If we go back a thousand years ago, that point of gathering an audience was the marketplace. That was really the primary channel through which consumers got information, where they communed, where they connected with friends and family, and ultimately where they conducted commerce. Over time, that was displaced somewhat by other forms of media, whether it was print media, radio, television, and today, of course, digital is the campfire that we all gather around. But the problem is digital is actually becoming prohibitive as a means of acquiring customers. From a cost standpoint, there are brands today already that are saying, “look, we just cannot afford to acquire incremental customers using digital media. That cost is too high. And in many cases, it exceeds the lifetime value of that consumer.” So, when I refer to stores being media, I’m certainly not talking about the networks that, as you mentioned, many retailers are putting in their stores to just inundate us visually and audibly with more and more advertising. I’m suggesting that the experience that I have in a Kroger is actually the most important form of media that Kroger can execute. So it’s a different philosophy entirely.
Adrian Tennant: Amazon has plans to open several large physical retail locations in the US that will operate like smaller department stores. This could extend the company’s reach in its sales of clothing, household items, electronics, and other categories. So Doug, what’s your take on this latest development from Amazon?
Doug Stephens: Yeah, it’s a really interesting development. Um, it’s one of those that when you read it, is not surprising, but it’s certainly interesting and compelling. And in a weird sort of way, you know, one of the old credos in any investment community is that you try to determine where everyone is running to, and if you’re smart, then you run in the opposite direction. And right now, the retail industry as a whole is running away from physical retail and running toward digital. So what does Amazon do? Amazon takes exactly the opposite approach and they run toward the physical world. Now, this isn’t Amazon’s first foray into physical retail. Of course, they bought Whole Foods several years ago. They have opened, Amazon GO stores, Amazon Four-Star stores. And if we’re being completely honest, their track record in physical retail isn’t that extraordinary, really. Having said that, this makes a lot of sense. There are things that are simply difficult to buy on Amazon and difficult to buy on any retailer’s website, frankly, things that require more consideration, things that require touch and feel – complex products that really require more information or confidence before a consumer’s willing to make a purchase. And of course, apparel falls into that category as well. So that makes sense. This also provides a local logistics point, a point to distribute products from, a point to collect returns from, which would only add efficiency to Amazon’s bottom line. It also gives them an opportunity to collect more data about how consumers do shop in physical environments. Amazon knows full well how we behave online, but it gives them an opportunity to create yet another data point in the marketplace to begin to connect consumer behavior between the online world and the physical world. And then there’s the more sinister side. It also gives them the ability, as we know from past announcements, it gives Amazon the ability to absolutely tank the market caps of companies like Kohls, who could potentially even become acquisition targets. We know that anytime Amazon merely clears its throat and sort of fixes its gaze on a category, they have a tendency to really rock the market caps of incumbents in those categories. We’ve seen them do it in the pharmacy sector. We’ve seen them do it across various categories. So that could be potentially the play here as well. But I think the big message to the marketplace, Adrian, and my opinion is that this is a warning shot across the bow of all physical retailers. And most specifically, I’m thinking of categories that have sort of dodged the bullet up until now. Categories like home improvement. If Amazon can open a quote-unquote department store and sell in the physical world, well, that brings them one step closer to selling lumber and concrete and building supplies and maybe doing a much better job of it than the incumbents in that category. So, I think everyone has to take this very seriously. And above all, Amazon has the luxury to spend a tremendous amount of money doing this and sticking with it and experimenting. So, yeah, not a surprise, could have many, many strategic dimensions, but something that everyone in the retail industry should be taking note of, for sure.
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Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after these messages.
Tim McCormack: I’m Tim McCormack, Bigeye’s VP of Media and Analytics. Every week, IN CLEAR FOCUS addresses topics that impact our work as media professionals, often inspired by data points reported in consumer research studies. At Bigeye, we put audiences first. For every engagement, through our own research, we develop a deep understanding of our client’s prospects and customers – analyzing their attitudes, behaviors, and motivations. We distill this data into actionable insights to inspire creative brand-building and persuasive activation campaigns – with strategic, cost-efficient media placements. If you’d like to know more about how to put Bigeye’s audience-focused media and analytics to work for your brand, please contact us. Email info@bigeyeagency.com.
Adrian Tennant: Each month, in partnership with our friends at Kogan Page, The Bigeye Book Club features interviews with authors who are experts in marketing, consumer research, and customer experience. Our featured book for November is Inclusive Marketing: Why Representation Matters to Your Customers and Your Brand by Jerry Daykin. IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners can save 20 percent on a print or electronic version of the book with exclusive promo code BIGEYE20. This code is valid for all products and pre-orders and applies to Kogan Page’s free e-book offer. To order your copy of Inclusive Marketing, go to KoganPage.com – that’s K O G A N, P A G E dot com.
Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. You’re listening to a special episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS looking at retail in 2022. Our featured Bigeye Book Club selection for July was Future-Ready Retail: How to Reimagine the Customer Experience, Rebuild Retail Spaces, and Reignite Our Shopping Malls and Streets. I spoke with the author, Ibrahim Ibrahim – a futurist, retail strategist, and designer. To discuss some of the ideas in his book, Ibrahim joined me from his office in London, England. In the first chapter of Future-Ready Retail, you observe that retail today is less about prime real estate and more about content, which you define as the curation of blended commercial offers and compelling experiences. You go on to talk about the importance of placemaking. So Ibrahim, what is place-making?
Ibrahim Ibrahim: I like the idea of redefining retail, not in terms of real estate, but in terms of content, because – and I’ll come to answer your question about what is place-making – but this is the context. Because retail has always been and will always be about four things: recruitment, transaction, fulfillment, and retention. But what’s interesting is that transaction and fulfillment are migrating away, if you like, from the physical space increasingly. And therefore, the physical space is increasingly being used to recruit and retain audiences. Which means that if you are a recruitment and retention space, you are actually behaving like a media brand, and therefore it’s content that’s going to help you recruit and retain. And if we agree that that is the case, then that changes the whole paradigm. It changes the design of that space. It changes its physical makeup. It changes the service proposition. It changes the experience, of course. It changes the master plan. It changes its connectivity to the public realm and how that works. It blurs much more with the public realm. So to answer your question with that context, placemaking for us is about three things: the three Cs. It’s about content which I’ve just explained. It’s about community. Localism. Reaching out to community, moving away from a hermetically sealed development that looks inwards, and creating a permeable connected development shopping center or whatever that locks outwards and connects to the urban grain, to the streetscape, and to community. So that’s community. And thirdly, culture. Placemaking, to be successful, has to resonate with the culture of its audience and not just be driven by agents that help fill spaces with tenants, without any reference to the cultural drivers that impact the behavior of our audience. And I think that is key. And I think that is where if you like shopping centers have been going wrong with this cookie-cutter approach. So we refer to – and I refer to it in the book as well – the four pillars of placemaking, which goes towards answering your question directly, what is placemaking? It’s based on four pillars. The first is convenience. So placemaking must deliver on one big expectation of our audience, and that is hyper convenience, simplicity, an experience that’s intuitive. That is devoid of complexity. I think that’s the first. And of course, if we drill into that, really extensively by understanding the impact of things like quick commerce and the whole kind of area of convenience. The second is fast. The polar opposite of slow, which is about a place creating programmable content about creating and delivering participatory experiences that are about community – and I don’t mean local community – communities of interest, brands that bring those communities together, and places about activation of public realm with those experiences. Not about a fixed demise that separates the public realm with tenanted space. These are blurred. And I think this blurring of the inside and the outside also is about placemaking. The third pillar is about localism. How do we create a place? And only a successful piece of placemaking must be connected to and align with the local community and the local environment, and its local heritage and its local makeup of audience, whether they are citizens, whether they’re influencers, whether they’re local brands. And very importantly, when we are master planning a place – and again, this is what makes a great place – is how we blend in one master plan local independent brands, influencers, local groups, community groups, not-for-profit organizations, social enterprises, with big brands. And whether those big brands are retail, leisure, entertainment, culture, the days of separating them and putting local small brands into tertiary spaces and giving prime space to big brands are over. And that is the death of place-making. And the fourth pillar that really, I think, cements a place and makes it sustainable in terms of futureproof is what we refer to as belonging, how we create a place that delivers on, and aligns with the values of our audience – their values in terms of the role this place plays in their day-to-day life and in the wider world, and not just somewhere to sell them stuff. And I think that means – and again, to answer your question maybe in another way, which is a very succinct way – what makes a great place making is this shift from a shopping or transactional rhythm to a community rhythm and that rhythm of footfall makes a great place.
Adrian Tennant: You believe that retailers and brand marketers need to shift our focus away from traditional demographic consumer segments, and instead consider cross-boundary, psychographic segmentation, which reveals what you refer to as Generation C. You highlight Nike, Apple, and Patagonia as exemplars of this approach. So Ibrahim, could you give us an overview of Generation C and explain how their traits inform how you design brands and place experiences?
Ibrahim Ibrahim: Yeah, I think the five Cs plus the sixth one is really key, but the sixth one is the first one is control. You know, the overriding demand of our audience now is control. Being in control, feeling in control, that gives them dignity. It gives them hyper-convenience. It means that their experience is intuitive. It means the business is transparent. It means there’s authenticity, all the elements, and what can go on and on about what do we mean by control or being in control, an experience that’s devoid of complexity. Those kinds of things. As I move on to the Cs, the first is convenience, which is exactly what I’ve just said. This idea of hyper-convenience, this idea of creating an intuitive experience. The idea of queuing is anathema in retail. Quick commerce is taking hold. We want – obviously COVID’s really driven the kind of demand for digital experiences – the whole fulfillment ecosystem, how we can have different aspects and types of fulfillment to meet the demands of our audience, how convenience delivers on this, a new way of working, this fragmentation of work, how people want to work as a dip-in, dip-out culture of work, how we fit working increasingly around other activities. We work a bit. We shop a bit, you know, go and eat a bit. We have a yoga class, we go back to work, we then meet a friend, and we work again. And what that work could be 10 minutes of emails, or it could be an hour Zoom call. And we do it all between moving from home to somewhere public, to maybe the office. If you think about how quick commerce is changing our behavior, how we can be anywhere, deliver, order anything, whether it’s a sandwich or a toothpaste, and get it delivered to us within 10, 15 minutes. What does that mean? I mean, at the moment, mostly that’s being done from home, but as we start getting used to that, and we start using quick commerce, wherever we are, we could be sitting on a park bench. I had a call the other day, and someone was literally sitting on a park bench in the call. I’m thinking, “Actually, you know, how we design public seating is no longer just about sitting. We gotta have public seating, which is where we work, which is where we eat. This is where we shop”, you know? So what does that mean in terms of the public realm? So anyway, all that is around convenience, and then, of course, the brands we choose, the brands we select, and the brands we put into our experience master plan are those brands that can deliver community, that have got communities following them, that are what we call community-first brands. It’s not product-first, it’s community-first. And I think that delivers on the S in the ESG. How can we bring brands and our selection of brands and in a master plan that drives social value? And drive the activation of the public realm. And of course, then those brands that we bring in are ones that should drive also what we call the third C is co-creation, brands that are open to helping the audience kind of shape their product. You know, thinking about brands like Fenty, for instance. Fenty is a cosmetics brand, as you know and that is what we call circular commerce. It started as a social network, it’s a social-first brand. And from that social network, from the learnings, from the interaction and the engagement of that social network, they developed a series of products, and they continue to develop those products through their social network. So it’s a circular commerce. So co-creation is really important. The fourth one is collaboration. That’s part of the same thing. How do we create environments, places that drive collaboration? We work with a really interesting group called Incredible Edible. Incredible Edible or a social enterprise that come to a place, they work with a local authority or a developer, and they take space, whether that’s a disused car park or a roof space, and they develop allotments where they grow produce. And they reach out to the local community and get the community to own these allotments. They help them grow the produce. And then the intermediary between that produce being sold to restaurants in this development and Incredible Edible take a cut of that. And so do the community who have been growing it. So collaboration is really important at a community level, at a place level, if you like, but also at a brand level, how we introduce brands and encourage brands that are collaborative with their audience as opposed to what you call monologue brand. And finally, the final C – and the most important C – is conscience: brands that have a conscience that prioritize the role they play in people’s lives and in the wider world. And of course, increasingly, that’s becoming a driver of preference, brands that are a purpose that look at sustainability ESG as a priority. And of course, we can see that also through the growth of B-Corps and triple bottom line. And I know that, and I think that will become universal, a kind of narrative at a kind of everyday level. Not many people have heard now of B-Corps, I’ve been talking about it for three or four years, and as I speak to more and more people, I see it’s becoming more and more kind of universal. And I think that it will get bigger and more kind of popular.
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Adrian Tennant: In September, I spoke with Ksenia Newton, marketing content specialist at the social listening platform, Brandwatch. Based in New York City, Ksenia had just published a report about retail trends in 2022, which identified elevated expectations around delivery and fulfillment. I asked her what the implications could be for retail and e-commerce brands.
Ksenia Newton: Logistics plays a huge role in building a solid reputation for any brand out there. And it’s been really hard for brands, right? Retail and e-commerce – the expectations that consumers have right now, as I already mentioned, are very high. So for retailers and e-commerce companies, it’s really important to expand their delivery options if possible. Because consumers want to have what they purchased, they want to have it right now. They want to have it on the day they need to have it and they can’t wait for it for a month. that means that all these brands need to expend their delivery options, not just offering delivery to your house, but maybe, setting up, pick up location or pickup point or curbside pickup, whatever it might be,the focus needs to be on delivered because consumers are really expecting that convenience level right now. . and the other thing that we saw online as well is that it was also a tweet that I’m going to quote, because it was very important to gain a lot of engagement. A person literally said, “if it’s sold out, please take it off the website, thank you.” and, one of my favorite tweets from that research, with 300,000 likes, you can tell that it resonated with consumers, quite a bit. Got a lot of engagement because consumers don’t want to spend time on the website looking for that product that they’re really want to purchase, just to realize that product is off, is not in stock anymore. So make it easier for consumer, please make sure you’re update your website so consumers don’t have to waste their time because not only they will waste their time, it will also affect how they view that brand moving forward. They may not want to shop with you again, right? And the other thing that we saw, I guess again, when it comes to elevated expectations and going back to the payment that I just talked about, placing an order and payment methods, something, again, that’s very important. I just did a whole report on the financial sector and kind of what are the most popular payment methods out there. And what I saw is, sure, credit cards and debit cards are still very, very popular, but payment methods like Buy Now, Pay Later, Klarna, and AfterPay and ClearPay have been gaining popularity rapidly. So consumers are looking for different ways to pay for their purchases. And with Buy Now, Pay Later, specifically, it allows you to split the purchase, the larger purchase and pay in installments, taking that pressure off a little bit. And then, you know, potentially, it will become kind of a differentiating point. As a consumer myself, I just used Buy Now, Pay Later to pay for a larger purchase, which was a mattress. And it really helped me personally, that I could just break down that price and just not have to look at this one large number. And it did help me in a way to choose between two brands as well. So this is something that we’re seeing consumers talk a lot about, online as well, Buy Now, Pay Later specifically, and adding additional payment options to the existing payment options on the website, because as you know, if your consumers can’t pay with the payment options that you have listed on the website, the business might lose their revenue. So there’s that.
Adrian Tennant: How do you think inflation will shape the upcoming holiday shopping season? Will consumers buy even earlier to avoid price hikes?
Ksenia Newton: One of the things, one of the trends that we saw in our research, we call it Revenge Spending. And that means consumers who were stuck at home because of the ongoing pandemic. Now that they’re out now that the restrictions have loosen up a little bit and they have a little bit of money to spend, they are now spending in revenge for all the waste of time. So that’s one of the trends that we saw, that I’m pretty sure is going to affect how consumers shop during the holiday season. The other trend, again, going back to Buy Now, Pay Later, I think it is very important that consumers these days have an opportunity to break down that price and maybe, between purchases something right away and paying for it right away. It’s too expensive. They can’t afford it. They now have an opportunity to pay for it over time, which I do think is going to positively impact sales in my personal opinion. So it’s a great option to attract consumers who might be hesitant to spend that money during the Holidays. And, another thing that I saw in the recent research around the financial sector is consumers are very enthusiastic when it comes to the topic of spending and payment options, they’re constantly researching. So it doesn’t sound like people are not going to buy. It sounds like they’re looking for better ways to shop whether it’s coupons, discounts, whether it’s buy now pay later or different payment options or whatever it might be, consumers are looking to spend. And then something that I also saw, I’m part of this Facebook group it’s called secret. I don’t know, it’s no longer secret, but it is a private, Christmas focus group on Facebook, where about a month ago people started reporting how they finalized their Christmas shopping. Again, and I know I mentioned this last time in our podcast, but this time around, people are spending a lot more money and they buy multiple presents. Again, this isn’t based on any data that I saw using our technology. This is something that I literally scope from just reading through comments in this Facebook group. People purchase multiple presents per person, again, it may not be representative of the rest of the population, but it also doesn’t sound like they’re trying to save up either.
Adrian Tennant: You’ve been listening to a special episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS. Thanks again to contributors: Devora Rogers, Doug Stephens, Ksenia Newton, and Ibrahim Ibrahim. And if you’d like a copy of Devora and Ibrahim’s books, you can get a 20% discount when you order online at KoganPage.com. Just add the promo code, BIGEYE20 at the checkout. As always, you’ll find a transcript with links to the resources we discussed today on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at Bigeyeagency.com, just select “Podcast” from the menu. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider following us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.
