Sales

Another COVID consequence: Consumer preferences for text communications just got a lot more pervasive.

Phillip Nones Business, Marketing Research, Sales , , , , , ,

Text messaging has been with us for a long time now. It’s only natural that its popularity would grow in tandem with the increased adoption of smartphones. 

But as late as 2019, field studies conducted by research companies like Lunar and Twilio showed that email communications continued to be the preferred way for consumers to receive communications from businesses or sales personnel.

Of course, both text and email had already eclipsed voicemail in popularity long ago – not to mention hanging on the phone for minutes (or hours) at a time to interface with companies in real-time.

Then COVID came along — and with it came stay-at-home orders from governments and employers. Its impact on consumer communications behavior was huge. New research reveals that the majority of people surveyed have increased their cellphone usage since the onset of the coronavirus – in most cases dramatically so.

In fact, nine out of ten consumers surveyed now report that they prefer receiving text communications over email when it comes to interfacing with businesses — and such text messages are also more likely to be read than email communications.

Moreover, consumers prefer texting with customer support reps more than real-time phone calls. They expect quick and accurate responses to their text inquiries — and don’t seem particularly concerned about the “digital paper trail” that might be less easy to document and preserve with text messaging than with email.

This shift in attitudes is actually pretty intuitive: Texting with customer support personnel allows anyone with a mobile device to get answers and resolve issues quickly, without enduring long hold times and transfers. The shorter resolution times that texting can deliver also encourage brand trust.

Chalk it up as yet another trend that was already happening — but COVID’s given it a big boost.

The COVID-related product shortages that just won’t go away.

Phillip Nones Business, Economics, Manufacturing, Sales, Social Media, Uncategorized , , , , ,
(Photo: CNS)

This past February I ordered an 18,000 BTU window air conditioning unit through the local GE dealer in the town where I live. It’s the largest such window unit you can buy, and there aren’t very many alternative options available from competitors.

Not surprisingly, the particular unit I ordered is manufactured in China (I am not aware of any similar models that are made in the United States). At the time I placed my order, I was informed that due to COVID-related disruptions of global deliveries, the earliest I could expect my unit to be received and installed was in April.

I wasn’t very surprised at this news, and figured that the delay would be perfectly fine for getting the AC unit installed and working in our home before the onset of the notoriously hot and humid summer months where we live here on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Since then, we’ve had several more pushbacks in the anticipated product delivery – first June … then August. And now the latest schedule I’m being told is for an October delivery – and even that date is “iffy.”

I think my situation isn’t unusual in these COVID-crazy times. Considering that the pandemic began towards the end of 2020, we are now 20 months later and the ripple effects are still being felt all throughout the global movement of products.

In fact, the recent coronavirus outbreaks that have occurred in Chinese port cities just this past month have caused even greater shipping delays than what had been encountered during 2020; they’re actually the worst shipping delays seen in 20 years. It means that the impacts will likely be felt all the way to the holiday shopping season at the end of this year — at a minimum.

As a related consequence of the COVID pandemic, the demand for shipping containers and shipping boxes has never been higher, even as some containers have been marooned on ships attempting to travel through the Suez Canal (which was shut down for a period of weeks earlier this year) as well as bottlenecks in certain port cities where labor shortages have been particularly acute.

Among the myriad of products and supplies that have been seriously affected are:

  • Appliances
  • Batteries
  • Food products
  • Furniture
  • Hospital, dental and surgical equipment/supplies
  • Measuring instruments
  • Plastic materials
  • Printed circuit boards
  • Semiconductor processing equipment

… and these are just some of the most notable examples.

With the Delta variant apparently causing a COVID-pandemic redux, it’s pretty impossible to gauge just how long it will take to work through the product shortages that have with us for so long already.

But what’s quite clear is that all of the initial estimates were woefully off the mark … so why would we expect anything different now?

What sort of product shortages have you experienced in the past few months, “thanks” to COVID – either in your business or at home?  Please share your experiences (surprisingly good or unsurprisingly bad) with other readers here.

Is FedEx losing its luster in the package delivery field?

Phillip Nones Business, Sales , , , ,

Recently, it’s fallen behind even the USPS in on-time delivery performance.

FedEx’s 2021 YTD delivery performance hasn’t exactly been stellar.

The pandemic-fueled increase of online product ordering hasn’t let up in recent months.  And the tale it tells is FedEx struggling to keep up with its rivals when it comes to on-time parcel deliveries.

The most recent statistics covering March through mid-April show a significant difference in delivery performance – 87% on-time deliveries for FedEx Ground shipments compared to 95% in the case of UPS.  Those figures come from ShipMatrix, Inc., a company that tracks shipping and delivery performance.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the comparatively weak performance by FedEx elicited this anodyne statement from a company spokesperson:

“FedEx continues to experience a peak-like surge in package volume due to the explosive growth of e-commerce.  As always, we are working closely with our customers to manage their volume and identify opportunities to help ensure the best possible service.”

… As if the other delivery companies aren’t facing the same dynamics regarding the growth in online ordering volume.

Delivery tracking software company Convey has released figures that are even more problematic for FedEx.  In April, only around 70% of FedEx shipments were on-time, which means the company’s performance was weaker than UPS and even the U.S. Postal Service. 

In response, FedEx claims that Convey’s data haven’t aligned with its own internal stats, but the company hasn’t released figures of its own to illustrate the difference.

At the same time, FedEx reports that it’s doubling down on plans to increase its network capacity, along with recruiting additional workers.  Even so, it acknowledges that FedEx Ground capacity will continue to be constrained until the end of 2021.

Up to now, the unimpressive record on parcel deliveries hasn’t appeared to hurt FedEx’s financials, which recently hit their highest-ever monthly revenue and operating profit levels.  The question is, can that performance hold long-term if businesses and their customers continue to experience slower deliveries?  It isn’t as if there aren’t alternative suppliers in the parcel delivery business.

Have you experienced issues with FedEx’s delivery performance recently?  If so, are they significant enough to make you open to considering alternative shippers?  Please share your thoughts with other readers here.

“You are what you wear.”

Phillip Nones Advertising, Demographics, Economics, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Sales, Social Commentary , , , , , , , ,

Research from Duke University suggests that people who are dressed up buy more and spend more than their casually dressed counterparts.

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, people have been “dressing down” more than ever.  But recent consumer research suggests that for buying more and spending more, retailers do much better when their customers are dressing sharp.

Researchers at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business analyzed the shopping habits of two different groups of consumers.  Smartly dressed shoppers — as in wearing dresses or blazers — put more items in their carts and spent more money compared to casual dressers (as in wearing T-shirts and flip-flops).

The difference among the two groups’ shopping behaviors were significant, too:  18% more items purchased and 6% more money spent by the sharp dressers.

The Duke University research findings were written up in a paper titled “The Aesthetics We Wear: How Attire Influences What We Buy,” which was published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

According to Keisha Cutright, a Duke University professor of marketing and a co-author of the report, when people are dressed up they tend to have more social confidence, which in turn reduces the anxiety people may feel about making certain purchasing decisions:

“We focus on how your dress affects your own perceptions.  When you’re dressed formally, you believe that people are looking at you more favorably and they believe you are more competent.  If you feel competent, you can buy whatever you want without worrying what other people think, or whether they will be judging you negatively.”

Parallel Duke research also found that retailers can actually prompt would-be shoppers to wear nicer outfits when shopping at their stores by featuring nicely dressed models in their advertising.  “So, there are some practical implications from the research for retailers,” Cutright says.

How about you? What sort of dynamics are in play regarding how you’re dressed and what you buy as a result?  Is there a correlation between what you’re wearing and how you’re shopping?  Please share your observations with other readers here.

Tesla gets taken to task by Consumer Reports.

Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Manufacturing, Marketing Research, Sales , , , ,
The Tesla Model Y SUV

Getting decent ratings from Consumer Reports is an important achievement for any product – particularly high ticket-items such as large home appliances and motor vehicles.

Many consumers consider CR to be the Holy Grail when it comes to its product evaluations. Indeed, weak comparative ratings is why so many American car makers have suffered greatly when attempting to compete with their Asian and some European counterparts.

And then we have Tesla.  This American car (and solar panel technology) company is different in that the Tesla product line doesn’t include any traditional gasoline-fueled vehicles.  The company has suffered for that in Consumer Reports’ reliability rankings, as its electric car technology isn’t fully mature – and hence subject to some rather gnarly quality control issues.

Actually, the company had been making some pretty steady progress on the product quality front – until the new Model Y mid-size SUV model hit the market earlier this year. Some of the common complaints about that new Tesla model have been eyebrow-raising to say the least – including some very basic and distinctly lo-tech problems like misaligned body panels and mismatched paint colors. 

As it turns out, the knocks on the Model Y have sent Tesla’s brand reputation plummeting in the CR reliability ratings.  The company now ranks an abysmal 25th out of 26 auto brands.  Ouch!

The Model Y has garnered Consumer Reports’ embarrassing designation “much worse than average.”  But Tesla’s more established vehicle models aren’t perceived to be that much better, actually.  CR rates both the Model S sedan and the Model X SUV as “worse than average,” meaning that only Tesla’s Model 3 is currently holding an “average” rating and the commensurate “recommended” status from CR.

Clearly, this company has substantial work left to do to convince a skeptical public of the quality of its automotive lineup.  Considering how quickly electric cars are being adopted now, it looks like the company will need to clean up its act within the next 24 to 36 months, or risk becoming one of those early pioneers that flamed out — just like happened to many of the early entrant motorcar companies a century ago.

What are your own thoughts about the promise – and pitfalls — of Tesla and its products?  Please share your perspectives with other readers here.

Change agent: COVID-19’s ripple effect on BtoB marketing and sales.

Phillip Nones Business, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Sales , , , , , ,

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit the world of business (and nearly everything else), marketing and sales in the BtoB realm had already undergone some pretty big changes in recent decades.

Historically, B2B sales were primarily a matter of face-to-face, physical contact. Often, the “road warriors” of those times would spend the majority of their weeks traveling to visit with customers and prospects at their places of business, or meeting them at trade shows.

But the turn away from that traditional model began in the 1980s and 1990s with building security concerns. Then along came 9/11 …

Technology has played a big part in the evolution — and has actually helped accelerate it with e-mail, database management, digital advertising, online RFP pricing/bid systems and other innovations affecting the nature of customer engagement.

Let’s not forget social networks, too — with LinkedIn being a particularly lucrative tool assisting many sales and marketing professionals in finding and nurturing prospects.

Somewhere along the way, the functions of marketing became much more than merely branding, advertising, and lead generation. Today, BtoB marketing is involved in every stage of the customer relationship.

Along comes COVID-19 in early 2020, which seems certain to drive further change. For one thing, virtual engagement has become a necessity instead of a merely an option.

At the same time, one could posit that customer retention has taken on more importance than ever before. It’s no wonder we’re hearing the phrase “retention is the new acquisition” stated with such frequency at the moment.

Roger McDonald

International strategic business advisor Roger McDonald believes that business has come full circle, returning to Peter Drucker’s classic maxim from more than 30 years ago: “Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation. These produce revenues. All others are costs.”

In McDonald’s view:

“Perhaps we are at a tipping point, where senior management will move beyond metrics of lead generation to nurture marketing’s evolving role as an organizer of systems, IT initiatives, and salesperson engagement for both acquisition and retention.”

One thing seems quite clear as we emerge from nearly three months of mandated COVID-isolation: We won’t return to an “old normal.” Those eggs have already been broken and scrambled.

What are your thoughts on which BtoB marketing and sales fundamentals have changed in light of the coronavirus disruption? Please share your thoughts with other readers in the comment section below.

A small silver lining in the big, black Coronavirus cloud? Robocalls fall off a cliff.

Phillip Nones Business, Direct Marketing, Sales, Social Commentary , , ,

There isn’t much positive news at all for businesses and consumers coming out of the Coronavirus pandemic — which makes one appreciate any glimmer of good news all the more.

One thing we’ve noticed at my company is a drop-off of those pesky robocalls in recent days. As it turns out, we aren’t the only ones seeing this.  My brother, Nelson Nones, who lives and works in East Asia but who also has U.S. personal and business phone lines, has noticed the same phenomenon.  And he believes that there’s a direct correlation to the COVID-19 outbreak.

What’s more, he has quantitative evidence to back it up. Here’s what he writes:

Within the past fortnight I’ve noticed a dramatic falloff in the number of robocalls I’m receiving to my primary landline. 

I’ve plotted the number of robocalls I’ve received so far during each day of March 2020, alongside the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases reported worldwide. Here are the results month-to-date:

What classifies as a “robocall”? I define a robocall to be an inbound call received from a phone number I’ve blocked based on reputations reported by the https://www.nomorobo.com website. 

As the chart above shows, the falloff began on March 11, 2020, just as the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases worldwide began to accelerate. Whereas during the first ten days of March I had been receiving two robocalls per day on average, since then I’ve received an average of just one robocall every five days.  

That’s almost a 90% drop. 

Is this just a happy coincidence? 

At first glance, maybe — because COVID-19 cases didn’t start to accelerate rapidly in the U.S. for another week or so, at about the same time as schools and theaters began to close, sporting events were postponed or cancelled, and many people began working remotely.  

If anything, one would expect the volume of robocalls to jump as scammers seize the opportunity to prey upon the growing number of people in the U.S. who are available to answer calls while cocooning at home.  

Most scammers use a technique called “neighbor-spoofing” to trick people into answering by displaying a local U.S. phone number. For a personal example, nearly all the robocalls I block appear to come from my U.S. area code (or from overlapping and adjacent area codes).  

But in fact, the vast majority of those calls originate from overseas. This makes them difficult to trace, but anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the calls originate from India and the Philippines, which already have well-established and legitimate call center industries owing to the local population’s English language skills.

As examples, Medicare scams involving the writing of fraudulent prescriptions for orthopedic braces are perpetrated in the Philippines, while sophisticated IRS scams have been broken up in India.

The scammers are criminal organizations that use personal computers, free software and ultra-cheap voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) connections to dial vast numbers of calls automatically. The tiny fraction of calls that are answered are put through to their human staff, who are reportedly packed elbow-to-elbow in call centers hidden inside the upper floors of nondescript buildings, under the constant watch of security cameras and even armed guards.  

In other words, the perfect coronavirus-spreading grounds. 

[What makes it possible for me to track this is thanks to the very same VOIP technology, which automatically routes callers who dial my primary U.S. landline to Thailand free of charge.] 

As you can see in the chart below, COVID-19 cases were already trending upward in India and the Philippines when my robocalls began to drop precipitously on March 11, 2020, about a week ahead of the U.S. curve:

I don’t think that this is a coincidence.

I suspect a lot of people in those concealed call centers got sick and went home. And now that India and the Philippines are in near-total lockdown, hardly anyone can show up for work to keep the scams running. 

We’ll see if the tsunami of robocalls resumes once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. In the meantime, I’m happy to count the hiatus as a small Coronavirus blessing, alongside Italy’s passionate sopranos and tenors in lockdown and the many acts of human kindness now being reported in the U.S. media.

Virtual Meetings: Will the COVID-19 virus accelerate a trend?

Phillip Nones Business, Human Resources, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Media, Sales, Social Commentary, Social Media , , , , , , , ,

One of the big repercussions of the Coronavirus scare has been to shift most companies into a world where significant numbers of their employees are working from home. Whereas working remotely might have been an occasional thing for many of these workers in the past, now it’s the daily reality.

What’s more, personal visits to customers and attendance at meetings or events have been severely curtailed.

This “new reality” may well be with us for the coming months – not merely weeks as some reporting has indicated. But more fundamentally, what does it mean for the long-term?

I think it’s very possible that we’re entering a new era of how companies work and interact with their customers that’s permanent more than it is temporary. The move towards working remotely had been advancing (slowly) over the years, but COVID-19 is the catalyst that will accelerate the trend.

Over the coming weeks, companies are going to become pretty adept at figuring out how to work successfully without the routine of in-person meetings. Moving even small meetings to virtual-only events is the short-term reality that’s going to turn into a long-term one.

When it comes to client service strategies, these new approaches will gain a secure foothold not just because they’re necessary in the current crisis, but because they’ll prove themselves to work well and to be more cost-efficient than the old ways of doing business. Along the same lines, professional conferences in every sector are being postponed or cancelled – or rolled into online-only events.  This means that “big news” about product launches, market trends and data reporting are going to be communicated in ways that don’t involve a “big meeting.”

Social media and paid media will likely play larger roles in broadcasting the major announcements that are usually reserved for the year’s biggest meeting events. Harnessing techniques like animation, infographics and recorded presentations will happen much more than in the past, in order to turn information that used to be shared “in real life” into compelling and engaging web content.

The same dynamics are in play for formerly in-person sales visits. The “forced isolation” of social distancing will necessitate presentations and product demos being done via online meetings during the coming weeks and months. Once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, in-person sales meetings at the customer’s place of business will return – but can we realistically expect that they will go back to the levels that they were before?

Likely not, as companies begin to realize that “we can do this” when it comes to conducting business effectively while communicating remotely. What may be lost in in-person meeting dynamics is more than made up for in the convenience and cost savings that “virtual” sales meetings can provide.

What do you think? Looking back, will we recognize the Coronavirus threat as the catalyst that changed the “business as usual” of how we conduct business meetings?  Or will today’s “new normal” have returned to the “old normal” of life before the pandemic?  Please share your thoughts with other readers here.

Amazon: Where utilitarian products deliver stellar results.

Phillip Nones Business, Sales , , , ,

In the era of e-commerce, year after year the growth and financial success of Amazon continues to be noteworthy — seemingly impervious to economic downturns or volatility.

What’s the secret sauce?

The answer is interesting. It isn’t that Amazon dominates any particular product category. Rather, it’s the kind of product — “utilitarian” — that cuts across many categories.

From cellar to stellar: Amazon shares’ incredible run.

Utilitarian products tend to be practical, generally inexpensive or downright cheap … and typically carry little risk associated with making a regretful purchase choice. They aren’t the type of products that inspire brand affinity, and they typically don’t require very much in the way of pre-purchase research on the part of buyers.

Moreover, on Amazon these utilitarian products have an equally utilitarian path to purchase. Purchase “journeys” — such as they are — are straightforward. Often they begin and end on Amazon’s site, with few or no deviations to conduct research or compare brands.

This is where Amazon excels — in nudging shoppers down the sales funnel while giving them no reason to go away from the website. Amazon makes the purchase steps quick, effortless and satisfying — and probably easier to complete than anyplace else online. If there is a more elegant purchase procedure out there in cyberspace, I have yet to find it.

And if some shoppers might wish to do a little more product evaluation, Amazon makes that possible as well, with consumer reviews offered right on the site for quick and easy evaluation and validation.

Of course, there are certainly product categories that aren’t particularly “utilitarian” in nature, and this is where Amazon’s model is a little less effective. A category such as women’s apparel is more brand-specific and brand-driven, and the purchase journeys in that realm are typically more longer, more circuitous, and more discovery-focused.

But Amazon has effectively carved out a niche in so-called “basic” products to the degree that it has become the “go-to” destination for thousands of products that are “common” in every sense of the word — resulting in some very uncommon business and financial results for the company.

Amazon is poised to become America’s single biggest retailer, outpacing Walmart.

Phillip Nones Business, Economics, Marketing, Sales , , , , , ,

It’s a measure of how much the American retail landscape has changed in the past decade that Amazon is poised to overtake Walmart as the largest U.S. retailed by 2022.

That prediction comes from a recently published report from market research firm Packaged Facts.

As of today, Packaged Facts estimates that Amazon makes up ~43% of all U.S. e-commerce sales, which is dramatically higher than its ~28% share just four years ago. Continuing its growth trajectory, by 2022 Amazon is expected to make up nearly half of all U.S. e-commerce sales.

That degree of concentration will make it bigger than Walmart — even considering the latter’s huge brick-and-mortar presence which Amazon lacks.

Of course, Walmart continues to possess additional advantages that Amazon cannot match, despite the latter’s acquisition of supermarket chain Whole Foods in 2017. Not only does Walmart have a huge physical footprint in retail, it also offers a wide range of in-store services which entice foot traffic — things like an onsite pharmacy, financial services, and photo processing.

Also working in Walmart’s favor is its dominance in so-called “click-and-collect” shopping orders. According to recent surveys, ~43% of respondents identified Walmart as the pickup location for their last click-and-collect order — three times the share percentage of runner-up Target.

Still, the emergence of Amazon atop the retail industry heap says volumes about the seismic shifts brought about by online retail. The channel hasn’t been around all that long in the grand scheme of things, but its impact has been nothing short of seismic.

How have your shopping habits changed during this time? Do they reflect what has happened in the larger market? Please share your thoughts with other readers here.