How loyal are your customers?

92% of consumers trust referrals from friends and family more than advertising and 70% trust consumer reviews (via Loyalty360). But do they trust the brand? eMarketer talks about millenials (aged 18 to 34) being very price sensitive in a recent article ‘Millennial Grocery Shoppers Favor Deals Over Brands’. Their research concludes that the path to a purchase grows increasingly fragmented and brand loyalty is diminishing. Shoppers – across many retail areas – are becoming used to switching brand, channel and outlet in an effort to save on price (87% of their survey respondents suggesting price was the biggest influence).

These are just two examples of recent research reports that raise the role of loyalty in a purchase decision. How do retailers respond in this multi-channel world? Is building customer loyalty worth the effort?

I love the internet.
Online advertising makes the internet work.
Therefore, I love online advertising.

That’s not meant as a confession, but more a statement of wobbly logic to introduce something very close to any online business: online advertising.

An advertiser and a publisher have a huge learning curve to tackle if he or she wishes to use the latest innovation in ad technology to unlock the promise of higher returns on ad spend (for the advertiser) or yield (for the publisher). The great catalyst for this innovation over the last 5 years must surely be ascribed to the increases in cheap, scalable computer power and digital storage. It’s a full time job now to keep abreast of new ideas and technologies, especially if you are trying to derive an income from online advertising, lead a marketing department or talk to an ad agency. Encouragingly, many a conference speaker continues to implore the world to look beyond the technology and focus on the online value chain (it’s just a deal between buyer and seller after all!). That’s all good sentiment, but you still need to figure out your ad servers from your trading desks, your DSP’s from your exchanges.