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Digital Consumer:
Trends and Challenges
Abstract
In a narrow sense, a digital consumer may be defined as someone
using mobile devices, and in a broad sense, as e-consumer, looking
for and purchasing products on the Internet, taking advantage of
the content published on-line, aware of themselves and of their
needs, and keen on simplifying the decisions they need to make.
The aim of this paper is to present the essence of the idea of digital
consumer, to highlight the considerations related to the behaviour
of digital consumers, and to describe the trends in their behaviour
that may pose a challenge to contemporary businesses. The
conclusion lists the main factors enter- prises should take into
account when developing business models to target digital
consumers.
Keywords: digital consumer, trend, e-commerce, s-commerce,
Internet
Introduction
A typical consumer of the digital era of today has access to many
sources of information, functioning in an environment which offers
many pos- sibilities unknown in the pre-Internet age on the one
hand, but also which is characteristic of chaos and an increasingly
difficult decision- making because of information overload. A
consumer ‘inhabiting’ a vir- tual environment becomes more
demanding and transfers their expec-
354 Jolanta Tkaczyk
The most popular of these is the issue of WOM; almost half of the
stud- ied articles is devoted to this matter. Consumer digital culture
research considers, quite deeply, the digital environments in which
consumers are situated. A key aspect of this work has been
understanding how consumers’ identities and self-concepts extend
into digital worlds (Ste- phen, 2015).
Digital advertising is a major topic in the marketing literature
and, with respect to consumer behaviour, considers how consumers
respond to various aspects of digital ads. A still-emerging theme in
recent years is how social media environments impact consumer
behaviour. The consequences can be thought of as environment-
integral (i.e. digital environments influence behaviour in those
environments) or environ- ment-incidental (i.e. digital environments
influence behaviour in other, unrelated environments). It is
interesting to see how the various infor- mational and social
characteristics of digital/social environments, such as being
exposed to other consumers’ opinions (e.g., reviews) or choices (e.g.,
bids in online auctions), or even just to friends’ lives through social
media, can impact subsequent behaviours. The interest in the issue
of consumers’ usage of mobile technologies, especially in the
context of shopping, has been growing as well.
The influence of digital consumers on the world of science is
reflected also by the change in the applied research methods.
Technological prog- ress gives rise to more and more methods based
on experimenting and on the actual consumer behaviour, e.g., eye-
tracking, EEG-based or magnetic resonance based methods.
Conventional research methods are being also subject to modification
under the influence of technology and the geolocation and
behaviour of consumers (e.g., FGI conducted in the virtual
environment).
The impact of the Internet increases with its range. On the one
hand, it gives great opportunities, especially to the developing
countries, but on the other hand, it leads to a growing risk of e.g.
cybercrime or personal data theft.
The development of mobile technology has made mobile phones
ad- vanced telecommunications centres. Apart from the basic
functions, they also feature photo cameras, computing units, and
offer mobile access to the Internet. Today, a mobile phone may
become a city guide (when we download and use a special
application), but it can be also used to make small payments (parking
fees etc.). Apart from mobile phones, there are also other mobile
devices that enjoy a high level of popularity; these in- clude tablets
or e-readers, which change the way we can benefit from education
and culture. Some speak of an arrival of a “screen culture”, where
screens are getting bigger and bigger (compared to the size of
mobile phone screens), increasingly cheaper, permanently connected
to the Internet, offering access to “on-line cloud” resources, more
interactive and intuitive in use, and more user-friendly (Tkaczyk,
2012).
The Internet has also made it possible for us to have access to
infor- mation and entertainment virtually anytime and anywhere
(Mazurek, 2011). We can now watch films and read books,
newspapers, and maga- zines in real time using our computers,
tablets, or even mobile phones. An option to rent videos with just
one click is now offered by both cable companies and on-line
services.
Wearable technology refers to devices such as bracelets, glasses,
cloth- ing and other wearables that track information ranging from
a user’s health to their current location to social media updates
(Euromonitor, 2015). Consumers look for wearables that deliver
unique safety or secu- rity benefits; the possibility to make phone
calls or send messages in a hands-free mode or the feature of
sending a distress signal in the case of children or the elderly are
ranked as the most desired functions of wearables, while
entertainment-related features – including gaming or augmented
reality – seem to be of much smaller importance.
Digital Consumer: Trends and Challenges 359
– the on-line and the off-line. They are the group that is the keenest
on using mobile technologies. They want to be able to switch
between various devices, which should be also interconnected with
one another. 55% of Millennials use search engines to look for
product information. Millennials love YouTube. For 20% of
Millennials, YouTube content is much more credible and interesting
than that found on TV. They turn to YouTube to search for
entertainment, education, and interact with others. They are keen
on viewing YT channels with others (friends and family members).
The first thing a typical Millennial does every day is check the
notifications on the social media platforms they use. They comment
or like posts of their friends at least once a day. They are also willing
to listen to their friends and people whom they trust; they com-
municate mainly through on-line channels.
These expectations are coupled with yet another trend that poses
another significant challenge to enterprises – the so-called Internet
of Everything (IoE), which can be understood as a networked
connection of people, process, data, and things (Bradley et al., 2015)
364 Jolanta Tkaczyk
Conclusion
Enterprises need to change constantly in order to be able to respond
to the expectations of the new type of consumers – by means of a
better identification of their needs, for instance. For digital
consumers taking advantage of products in a virtual environment,
these products need to user-friendly and useful, their suppliers
should be reliable and trusted, and their price should be affordable.
By looking at the behaviour and demands of digital consumers, it
is fair to state that the business model adapted to their needs should
be based on the following three qualities: efficiency, savings, and
engage- ment (Bradley et al., 2015). It should offer them an optimal
utilization of resources (time and money), a flexible pricing policy
(discounts, coupons, points awarded in loyalty programmes), and
engage them through personalized adverts, adjusted to the place,
time, and viewer, or through product recommendations. It should be
also noted that the
366 Jolanta Tkaczyk
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Digital Consumer: Trends and Challenges 367