Summary: The Soul of the New Consumer

Review and Analysis of Windham and Orton's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9782511016862
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: E-Commerce
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of Laurie Windham and Ken Orton's book: `The Soul of the New Consumer: The Attitudes, Behaviors and Preferences of E-Customers`.

This complete summary of the ideas from Laurie Windham and Ken Orton's book `The Soul of the New Consumer` asks an important question: “What are the new consumers of the Internet economy like, and how do they differ from the traditional consumers?`. In their book, the authors reveal the results of their analysis into internet usage, showing just how empowered consumers have become in the new economy and how much they enjoy the balance of power being in their favour. This summary will teach you about the changes experienced in business and what this means for the future of your company.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand key concepts
• Expand your knowledge

To learn more, read `The Soul of the New Consumer` and discover how you can deal with online selling and gain success in the new economy.

Summary of The Soul of The New Consumer (Laurie Windham and Ken Orton)

1.
Who Are the “New Consumers”?

Main Idea

New consumers have more choices available to them through the Internet than consumers of any previous era. As a result, they know more, act more decisively and ignore geographic constraints than ever before.

Supporting Ideas

The acceptance of the Internet by consumers has been an exceptionally rapid behavioral shift which was accelerated by several key developments:

• Retailing has gradually become de-personalized from small “mom-and-pop” operations to much larger discounters. Consumers became more confident with using technology to purchase the goods they needed.
• Modern society makes increasing demands on a person’s time – so consumers have become more willing to have the activities of daily living performed for them.
• Credit cards have become widely accepted as an efficient way to pay for goods and services.
• There is an increasing degree of familiarity with and expertise available in the use of personal computers in a business, home and educational setting.
• Television and other forms of mass communication are much more widely accepted as authoritative information sources.

As a result, the innovators (2.5-percent of the general population) and the early adopters (13.5-percent) have already integrated the Internet into their lifestyles and purchasing patterns. At present, half of the early majority (34-percent) are also in the process of moving to the Internet, leaving just the late majority (34-percent) and the laggards (16-percent) still to make the transition. Naturally, as more people go online actively, the profiles of Internet users are coming into alignment with the general population’s market segments.

So specifically what do the Internet empowered new consumers want most of all? It’s really quite simple:

• They don’t want their time to be wasted.
• They expect immediate delivery of whatever is ordered.
• They want meaningful content, not marketing fluff.
• They don’t want to be taken advantage of.
• They are prepared to move on if anything disappoints them.

In short, new consumers are the ultimate embodiment of empowerment. They like being in control.

Key Thoughts

“The soul of the new consumer is a labyrinth of emotions, preferences, behaviors, anxieties and loyalties. The new consumer is confused but awed, trusting while still suspicious, afraid yet adventuresome, busy but curious, anonymous but uniquely individual. And while many forces are at play in the soul of the new consumer, one quality is absolute: The new consumer is empowered.”

– Laurie Windham and Ken Orton

“In the minds of new consumers, the Internet is evolving from a potential source of information to the place where they instinctively begin their tasks. The Internet serves as a center of gravity, an organizing principle for how we begin many activities of daily living.”

– Laurie Windham and Ken Orton

2.
The Six Emerging E-Customer Market Segments

Main Idea

Increasingly, e-customers are starting to arrange themselves into six distinctive market segments:

1. Convenience shoppers
2. Price-sensitive shoppers.
3. Comparison shoppers.
4. Brand loyal shoppers.
5. Focused shoppers.
6. Storefront-averse shoppers.

The overall e-marketplace of the future will be defined by the struggle to acquire and retain e-customers within these specific market segments.

Supporting Ideas

Interestingly, numerous market studies have demonstrated conclusively that consumers act differently online to how they act in person. And to make things even more complex, people even behave differently for specific categories of products and services delivered online – there is no overall uniformity to their online activities.

The mainstream market is increasingly being broken down into identifiable market segments dependant on the consumer’s motivation for buying online. Taking each of these market segments in turn:

1. Convenience Shoppers
   These consumers place a high value on their time, and are not prepared to switch from one online retailer to another just to save a little money. They hate having to learn how a new Web site is structured, filling out online forms and so on. Many early Internet customers belonged to this segmen...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Book Presentation
• Summary of The Soul of The New Consumer (Laurie Windham and Ken Orton)
• About the Summary Publisher
• Copyright