📊Consumer behavior trends for 2024
📊Consumer behavior trends for 2024
Sources:
Our preferences for certain products or services changes as we age or with a new generation of consumers they tend to adapt to new ways of living. It would all depend on who your intended audience are but its true that the world always changes as new technology arises, political turmoil, tensions globally, or other myriad of factors that causes consumers to think with their pockets.
So here is a short list of what I believe will be the trends for 2024 gathered from sources across the web.
AI concerns rises
Generative AI won’t be going anywhere, in fact, its presence will increase over the new year. You’ll be inundated with a myriad of AI tools that does the same thing as the others but with a focus in a certain field, for example, AI for Customer Service.
Concerns will rise as the technology strength increase enough to manipulate the political campaigns of 2024. It will become an issue for some candidates on if they will reign in on Big Tech and reduce the speed of AI. Tech CEOs of course will deflect and say it is no issues to be concern about with AI, they’ll create ‘safety measures’ but only to devalue their product.
It will be contention between it having these features of voice cloning, deep fakes, copyright infringement, power usage, and other factors that can blur the line between a good product and ethics. Companies will have to decide on a trade-off of giving users what they want or it potential having more harmful effects spread across society.
Short-form content dominates in select industries
When we think of entertaining content we might include comedy, action movies, sports, or extreme activities like sky diving. Now put those entertaining content within a short-form video with some good edits and you have an engaging content that will grasp attention.
One of the several industries that has been seeing a rise in engagement from fans are sports, specifically combat sports.
This would make sense as fans are already use to the highlights of their favorite sports such as NFL, NBA, MLB, but now more specifically combat sports received higher visibility across social media with short-form content. It can be due to the sort of carefully edited clips that shows the best parts of the combat with specific stats splashed on the screen that makes fan more engaged to comment, share, like, or all the above.
Customer Service becomes more important
So I have a personal story of this. I ordered a button down shirt from SHEIN with expectations that it’ll arrive before I had to leave for my trip to Guyana. The order was at least 2-3 weeks out and it did estimated that it will be shipped within at least a week. SHEIN do have a fulfillment center here in the U.S. that was not far from me and the wait time for it was not the issue.
When the order came and it said delivered with an image of the parcel, it was in the lobby of my building [emoji]. The lobby of my building in an apartment building that is in the ghetto. Now personally I don’t think that’s a good combination to leave anyones deliveries laying around strangers right but the process to actually get a hold of someone from SHEIN is what drove me nuts.
It was an aggravating process of talking to an AI chatbot about the issue, reporting the issue on the website, reporting the issue on the app, and to no avail. It was just the run around of the same response by the bot until I finally called my bank to report it as fraudulent then eventually getting my money back.
Customer service will be ever more important in the age of AI, not just chatbots built with faceless interfaces or voice interface. In times of aggravation, worries, or anger about technology, humans want a human to explain to them the issue they are facing. We can possibly get to a resolution rather quickly and vent our frustration to someone who may at least have the decency to care. A bot cannot care. I am all for chatbot customer support but if I need a human to chime in then I’d rather have one take over.
Brands who incorporate human elements into their AI features will see an increase in brand loyalty. Brands that hide their customer service number, email, or other ways to speak with a human will only falter. We understand AI has the capabilities to improve productivity for a company but when it comes to certain elements of human needs, such as emotions then we need a human touch. With situations such as what I faced, we would only think, ‘OMG, I won’t get my money back’ or ‘Wow! Don’t tell me SHEIN just took my money’, and those feelings are attached to my shopping experience with a brand. Now I can only look at that brand with disdain and not order from them again.
What could save brands like this is investing in ‘human’ customer support/services. By the way I was not the only shopper of SHEIN who experienced this when I asked my friends, and viewed reviews online.