Demand to consumption: How the customer purchase journey is getting digitised

The digital landscape of India is changing and most consumers are actively making most purchase-related decisions digitally. But there's still a lot to be done to reach the bottom of the funnel so that the barriers related to online shopping could be broken, opined a top notch panel comprising industry leaders from various sectors.

The six-member panel was speaking on 'Designing digital experience for the complete customer journey’ at the XIV IAMAI Marketing Conclave in Mumbai.

Discussing the challenges involved with the explosion of unstructured data available online while designing the digital experience for customers, Ankit Desai, Chief Digital Officer, Marico, said, “Advertisers and manufacturers have to find a place in the conscious mind of the customers. Customers today are two steps ahead of the marketers. They are interacting with multiple brands through multiple windows and channels.”

Abhiraj Banerjee, Strategic Business Lead, Sitecore India, added, “The journey of customers from offline to online has become unpredictable. Both customers and marketers are reacting to it in different ways.”

Digital shopping, booking and marketing platforms have exploded in India in the last few years. In the automobile industry alone, 80% of all the key touch points of customers are largely on digital platforms.

Puneet Anand, Senior General Manager (Marketing) and Group Head, Hyundai Motor India, said that after Hyundai launched an online booking platform, the company saw 75% of all the bookings done online for Santro from tier 1,2,3 and 4 regions.

The industry leaders said the development of AI/VR/IoT will not only make them better their products but would also help them effectively reach the bottom of the funnel.

“Hyundai is planning to launch Next Generation of Automobile Telematics inside cars to make the experience more digitised for customers, which would intimate the car owners about due dates of insurance or pending car service. This is going to rationalise the way people look around," Anand said, adding the next Ambani would be the one who would be able to manage the data mining.

The panel was moderated by Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO, WATConsult and included Manik Nangia, Director Marketing and Chief Digital Officer, Max Life Insurance, as a key speaker.

While platforms like Cashify battle with the customer’s mental barrier in selling a gadget online, Shruti Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Cashify, said, “Users don’t know where and how to sell a phone apart from the usual platforms available. However, they feel their experience is not up to their expectation. Hence, Cashify is changing the way the people perceive the price of their smartphones, and lets people make the right choice. Selling a phone is not a lifestyle choice. There is a lot of manual intensive decision making that takes place while selling it online. Hence, the opportunity, as Cashify with the price-algorithm that it uses, people can take quicker decisions on their choice to sell and can sell their old gadgets online in just 60 seconds. Cashify plans to use AI and ML in future to make the user-experience even better. More than 1million Indians have sold their phones on Cashify.”

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