Coping with the Savvy Consumer in 2010

Consumers are now beginning to make some sense of the past 18 months of financial turmoil, are developing increasing confidence in their common sense when making purchasing decisions, and those who still have jobs are working longer and harder, and possibly for less money.

As a result, they are relating every £1 of ‘discretionary’ expenditure to their current and future earnings, assessing the opportunity-cost in terms of alternative uses of the money, like never before…and providing major opportunities for pro-active suppliers.

These consumers are raising their own performance standards, and using them as a measure against which to evaluate every product and service offering, refusing to outsource their decision-making to marketers and retailers, ever again.

Welcome to the new savvy consumers, the professional shoppers, discerning buyers who are simply seeking to obtain satisfaction of their needs in an open market, at a price that compares well with alternatives available, based upon simple common sense.

As the newly emerging primary driver of demand, the savvy consumers have to be persuaded that their needs are being met, for a fair price, and that their purchases deliver more than expected in practice.

In other words, this new consumer, if willing to spend, is unwilling to accept anything short of good value for money.

Opportunities for pro-active suppliers

1. The savvy consumer is providing an entirely new basis for suppliers to re-evaluate every SKU in their portfolios against available alternatives


2. Ruthless elimination of anything that does not clearly demonstrate a total match with latest consumer need


3. Make it available in a way that shoppers want to buy, better than the competition.


4. Re-assessment of the customer portfolio from the same point-of-view


5. Aim at identifying and cultivating trading partners that are capable of expressing the brand offering in a way that can meet consumer-shopper needs at point-of-sale, profitably.


6. In the same way, building trade partnerships with like-minded retailers has to present joint-opportunities to optimise common-sense market need, while others await a return to ‘normal’…