Up close & personal

OC&C’s latest research piece is informed by-depth interviews with over 100 CMOs and senior marketing executives from a range of industry sectors across UK, the USA, China and continental Europe.

The macro environment that businesses are operating in continues to evolve at a rapid rate. Consumer behaviour and choices around the physical, digital or mobile platforms that they engage with are morphing, and as a result the ways that they are influenced and their expectations around digital, mobile and overall customer experiences continues to grow.

2017 is the year where mobile will become the consumer’s platform of choice for online engagement and transactions in some developed markets. In the next 12 months, in the UK time spent looking at content on a mobile will surpass that spent on TV for the first time with the average person spending a staggering 3.2 hours a day looking at content on their phone.

Online will account for one-third of all purchases (excluding Food and Grocery) by 2020, and more than 70% of purchases will have been researched online, irrespective of how they end up being fulfilled. Of all online purchases, more than 50% will involve a smartphone in many developed markets in 2017. Similar transitions are taking place in how content and entertainment are consumed. The rise of mobile presents a host of new strategic questions to which few CMOs are ready to respond. In fact, many of them are still trying to put in place the key pillars of their digital strategy let alone think about how to address mobile.