What impact does mobile Internet have on consumer decision-making?

A year ago, people still thought that mobile Internet was part of the Internet. After more than a year of development, it can be confirmed that the mobile Internet's anytime, anywhere connectivity is the direction of the Internet.

In the era without mobile Internet, consumers made decisions like this: Xiao Ming turned on the TV out of boredom, and the TV kept playing this advertisement: a coffee bean from a mysterious region. Xiao Ming was attracted by this content. A few days later, Xiao Ming went to the supermarket to buy something and saw many new coffee products on sale, but Xiao Ming didn't know about these new products. Xiao Ming remembered the advertisement he saw a few days ago, but found that this supermarket didn't have this product. In the end, Xiao Ming had to choose the coffee he often bought before.

In the era of mobile Internet, consumers’ decisions may be like this: seeing an advertisement for coffee beans on any screen, once they are interested, they can directly search for the coffee bean product on their mobile phone, place an order to buy it, and then wait.

It may also be like this: Xiao Ming sees many new coffee products on sale in the supermarket. Xiao Ming uses the mobile Internet to take photos and search, and quickly finds the detailed information of these new products and other people’s comments. He happens to see a friend just saying that this coffee is very good on social media. The current promotional price is relatively advantageous compared to the average price, so Xiao Ming happily buys this new product in the store. Then he shows it to his friends on social media.

Compared with PC Internet, mobile Internet has truly participated in the decision-making process of consumers. Mobile Internet connects people with services, people with information, and people with brands. If necessary, consumers can find any information and buy any product.

Connecting consumers and products

The decision path of consumers is no longer like the traditional funnel, but has become a tightly linked model. When consumers are in a certain situation and see a certain product, they can quickly find out the relevant information of the product. If they want to buy it, they can buy it very quickly. Therefore, for consumers, a more closely linked process is achieved. Secondly, in such a decision path, links can be skipped. In the whole process, not every link must be realized, but can be linked, because on the mobile Internet, consumers can quickly find information about related products and brands and quickly buy the desired products - just like, on social media, most sales interfaces will have a payment button. Therefore, at this time, the decision path of consumers has become a linked method.

Brands and products need to pay close attention to various new touchpoints and promptly capture consumers' interests and convert them into purchasing actions.

Because of the infinite shelves and infinite information, consumer decision-making has become more complicated. A recent study by the author shows that in the mobile Internet era, a car buyer compares 2 to 3 times more models than in the mass media era, and processes more than 10 times the amount of information. So this is a paradox. The mobile Internet provides the convenience of connecting people and products, but it also makes people's decision-making more complicated: the task of selection, the workload of selection, and the difficulty of selection have increased.

How to help consumers make decisions has become a problem that marketing needs to solve. Many tools have emerged, such as bargaining tools, product performance comparison tools, and recommendation seeking tools. The emergence of these tools is to simplify consumers' decision-making.

Do ads still work?

Good advertising still works, but content has become more important. Consumers' interest may be stimulated by ads they see, product placement in movies and TV series, or sharing from friends. Advertising is still effective in communication as a large-scale means that companies can control, but marketers need to pay attention to the process of consumers actively seeking information. Consumers' channels for obtaining information are far from advertising. When there is demand and interest, consumers will actively search, check official websites, ask friends, etc. After advertising stimulates interest, more attention needs to be paid to the construction of this type of content.

In short, in the era of mobile Internet, the five stages of consumer decision-making, namely interest, information, demand, action, and feedback, still exist, but have become a tighter chain, and there are rapid jumps, deformations, and short circuits between each link. Under such a premise, what should mobile Internet do? Perhaps this is what you and I are thinking about.

Author: Tan Beiping is the R&D Director of Millward Brown Greater China. An expert in brand, advertising and media, he is responsible for Millward Brown’s R&D and innovation. He has developed and standardized several data analysis and market research models by integrating cutting-edge sciences such as IT, data mining and cognitive science. He developed a brand digital asset measurement platform with Baidu and led the evaluation of the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands.

Source: Business School Magazine, October 2014