The Luxury Institute recently highlighted that younger more-affluent consumers seek out information on a brands corporate social responsibility more actively than their older and less well-off counterparts.

“Young consumers believe that caring about the environment is how you create a meaningful life,” said Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute.

The recent IBM Institute for Business Value research has shown that mass marketing alone struggles to reach the diverse digital audience.

In order to reach these fragmented audiences marketers need to produce niche offerings and contextual approaches that are tailored specifically to emerging platforms, directional offerings and new experiences.

The research references a Lead M&E Analyst of a global research firm, which highlights the shift in consumer power:

“Consumers can no longer be considered ‘the audience’ – they are simultaneously readers, editors and marketers, especially the younger demographics.”

With this quote in mind and the continual adoption of social media, I feel it is becoming more and more beneficial for brands to allow those active within social media complete access to brand collateral.

The ability to track brand sentiment across social media offers a safety net to brands that open up their archives to bloggers. This strategy offers a cost efficient way to reach this diverse digital audience and if a brand is still worried about the limited control in social media then it could limit any perceived threat by restricting to launches.

Maybe this strategy could take the place of microsites built around launches. By providing bloggers with uniquely created and exclusive animated assets, creatives and images for the launch (that you would expect to see on a launch microsite) the brand gets over the biggest hurdle of a bespoke microsite, getting traffic to it, as the blog already has an established audience.

A study by Netpop has shown that social networkers are much more likely to shop and spend more online than users that don’t engage with their social network.

The study showed that social networkers bought a number of products and services online, spending on average of $101 per month. Non-contributors to social networks spent about 20% less per month.

Social networking has grown 93% since 2006 , with 76% of US broadband users actively contributing  to the web via social media.

Experian’s ‘Engaging Online with the Empowered Customer’ report has shown that in 2008 fashion retail sites saw a 31% growth in traffic . Alongside only a 1% growth in traditional catalogue adoption, the research demonstrated the shift by consumers to a more digital focus when researching for fashion.

The report demonstrated that although growth in traffic had been exceptional, fashion retailers did not capitalise on repeat purchasing, with 45% of customers making just one purchase. The report also showed that just under a third of customers made up almost 70% of the revenue, customers that should be identified and encouraged to make more frequent visits.

Experian felt that retailers and home-shopping companies were not achieving customer expectations of multi-channel. It called on them to ‘blend’ online and offline activities to offer customers a better experience and encourage repeat purchases.

“Greater emphasis needs to be placed on the exploitation and application of existing data assets,” said Marie Myles, director of marketing for Experian’s integrated marketing division. “The enhanced insight derived from this approach and the move to a coordinated customer contact strategy will lead to more profitable and longer relationships between brands and consumers.”

Adidas have shown that they understand that the savy consumer researches fashion before making a purchase, in this current economical climate all purchasing is becoming more and more considered. Their new look book is very slick and with the occasional play of ‘ beggin’ from their TV ad blends the offline with the online very well.

The benefits marketing executives believe social media provides their brand or their client’s brand.

Back in Jan 2008 Wallpaper* and the IAB worked to together to create the first piece of research looking at the behaviour of luxury consumers online.

This research demonstrated that the age group for luxury consumers online was vastly lower than first thought and that this audience facilitate their lives through the net.

The research split the luxury consumer audience into 3 groups, those that answered yes to 1-2 screening questions, 3 – 4 screening questions and 5 – 8 screening questions. Those that answered 5-8 screening questions were seen as premium luxury consumers.

The premium luxury consumers demonstrated high levels of media consumption including watching high levels of video content online and downloading podcasts regularly.

In summary the research showed that luxury consumers are well versed with the digital landscape, with specific media choices selected and a high consumption of new digital platforms.

Url for the research:
http://www.iabuk.net/media/images/Eye4StrategyFinal_2665.pdf