Digital Marketing. Annmarie Hanlon

      2 The Digital Consumer

      Learning Outcomes

      When you have read this chapter, you will be able to:

      Professional Skills

      When you have worked through this chapter, you should be able to:

      2.1 Introduction

      In this chapter we will explore how digital marketing has introduced a whole new era for the consumer. We can browse, compare, share and shop online. From owning to renting, it's all about delivering a successful customer journey.

      We all study consumers – psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists and other experts. People-watching is a key part of consumer research: whether people decide to buy or not to buy, how they choose, use and dispose.

      2.2 The evolution of the digital consumer

      We have moved from a time where companies made as many products as they could and sold as many as possible in the mass production era, when there were few options for shopping other than local stores. We are now in an era where we can access any goods from any place at any time and often on any device. There is an emergent culture of sharing what we have; from cars, to parking spaces, from spare rooms to food. Plus we are more accepting of technology and see the usefulness it contributes to our lives. So who or what is the digital consumer?

      Let's start with a definition of consumer from the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford Dictionary, 2017a):

      That's fairly straightforward. We all buy things and use them. At one level I'm a consumer of salads and cappuccinos, at another I'm a keen consumer of handbags. The salads and coffee are essential purchases to fulfil a need of not being hungry or thirsty or tired. And the handbags. I don't actually need any more bags. Each year I say I won't buy any more, but that year hasn't quite happened. The handbags are fun, make me smile and the whole process of selection and purchase is hedonic. So, I am a hedonic consumer (see Key Term).

      Discover More On Consumerism

      For a full history of consumerism, Steven Miles (1998) has a useful book: Consumerism – As a Way of Life.

      In the Journal of Consumer Culture, George Ritzer and Nathan Jurgenson (2010) wrote ‘Production, consumption, prosumption’, which also described the evolution of these phenomena.

      There are many excellent journals relating to consumers which you can explore online via your university library system, including: Journal of Consumer Behaviour, Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Consumer Research.

      But the handbags offer a utilitarian benefit too (see Key Term). They store stuff. I have different bags for different events with specific utilitarian benefits. If it's a train journey, I take a bag with a cross-body strap as it's less hassle getting on and off trains. If it's a plane journey, I take a bag with a strong zip so everything doesn't fall out at the security checks. If it's a day at the university, I take a big open bag to hold the water bottle, books and other student paraphernalia. These functional attributes are utilitarian benefits whereas the amazing handbag shape, the designer, the colour and the materials are all hedonic benefits.

      Key Terms Hedonic and Utilitarian Consumption

      The Greek goddess Hedone represented pleasure and enjoyment and is the origin of the word hedonism. Describing consumption as hedonic indicates that it provides delight. Hedonic consumption is largely credited with having been placed on the marketing research agenda by Elizabeth Hirschman and Morris Holbrook:

      Hedonic consumption designates those facets of consumer behavior that relate to the multi-sensory, fantasy, and emotive aspects of one's experience with products. (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982, p. 92)

      A hedonic consumer is thus a consumer who gains happiness from acquisition!

      Utilitarian benefits have been described as the functional, instrumental and practical attributes of the item (Chitturi et al., 2008).

      For more on hedonic and utilitarian consumption see: ‘Pleasure principles: A review of research on hedonic consumption’ by Joseph Alba and Elanor Williams in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (Alba and Williams, 2013).

      Michel Pham discussed consumer psychology, mainly concerning the way the research has become detached from practice. He illustrated the scope of consumer behaviour as being framed between consumer experience and consumer learning, which is shown in Figure 2.1.

      If we apply this in a digital context we might consider an online-only product, such as online storage space. We are in an environment where we write reports, create presentations, store images and collect content. All these online documents require storage. You could store your documents on a PC, but the challenge is that you may use different PCs or laptops – at home, at the university and in libraries. And what happens if your main laptop breaks or gets stolen? That would mean your work was lost too.

      Thinking about the potential for things to go wrong, it is easier to rent some space in the cloud.

      The concept of ‘the cloud’ means we can access our materials at any time from a remote or virtual computer, which enables ubiquitous computing (see Key Term, p. 4).