Benefits of consumer participation

The world of marketing is a fast paced one, and companies have no rest when it comes to making sure that consumers don’t get bored with their brand and stay loyal to it. One of the most basic ways of making the consumers loyal to a brand is to offer advantages in return for purchase. This gives things like loyalty cards or points that you can collect and then redeem for extra items or to use as a certain amount of money off your following purchase. More recently, with the quick ascent of the Internet, digital promotion and social media have been used a lot as ways of getting consumer engagement with brands. Another popular trend these days is to make the consumer participate - and when we say participate, we don’t mean sign up for a chance to win vouchers or an amazing holiday in some exotic place, no! Companies make the consumer work on their brand (yes, seriously!). Thus, Kleenex organizes packaging design competitions, The Yorkshire Crisp Company ask their consumers to come up with innovative flavours, Pizza Express get their customers to send pizza recipes, and Soap & Glory offer their consumers the chance to suggest puns that, if good enough, will be used as names for their new products.

Lack of ideas or on the contrary brilliant idea?

Some criticism could arise from this trend. Things such as “the creative/marketing people working for those companies are probably short of ideas”, or “those companies just want to spend less money with creatives so they’re using free labour instead” could be thought.

But do these companies encouraging consumers to participate in the development of their brand really want to spend less money? This is not so certain if we consider that Walkers was offering the winner of their competition entitled “Do Us a Flavour! Win a Packet!” a £50,000 prize plus 1% of all future sales, and a prize of £10,000 each to five runners-up.

Moreover, making consumers participate is maybe the best way to give them what they want after all. This “made by the consumer for the consumer” technique can be a way to say “we give you what you really want because we really care about you”. Plus who has never dreamt of having their hour of glory? To see their packaging, their flavour, their recipe, their pun, their work, in short: the results of their imagination become a real product, and then to have the satisfaction of being able to say “I made this”? Offering this opportunity to a consumer is quite a clever idea to be fair. And if we look attentively, this technique offers at least three major advantages; let’s call them the 3 A’s (for attraction – amplification – attachment).

If we take once more the example of the Walkers’ competition: such prizes as the ones they offered are quite mouth-watering (no pun intended). The competition is therefore likely to attract a fair amount of potential consumers along with already existing consumers, who will suddenly pay more attention to the brand and its existing flavours in order to come up with an innovative, winning flavour of their own. Thus, we could say of these consumers that they are attracted to the brand; and let’s face it: more attraction is synonym of increased consumption, which is all good for the brand.

The second benefit quite logically results from the first one: those consumers-users, excited by the prospect of the prize, are likely to spread the word and to talk to their relatives and friends about the brand and the competition (send them links, become fans or followers on the social platforms, etc.). This is the first stage of what we nowadays call the “buzz”. The “buzz” - or another (probably more fashionable) way of saying “word of mouth” - has a long-lasting effect (hence the idea of “stages”). First is the amplification of the message - our second A - that comes with the excitement of a new experience and that goes very fast, spreading especially online (via social networks among others). Then the message is further amplified through recommendation, by talking to family and friends about the advantages of using such and such product, which can be done either online (blogs, forums, comments and rating, etc.) or off line. This leads us to our third A: attachment.

It is in companies’ interest to pay particular attention to the experience they offer to consumers because this experience could be their key to success. To explain: by making the consumers participate in and interact directly with the brand, companies are creating an emotional connection, an attachment to their products. If consumers have a good time / a good experience, they are likely to generate positive comments, to recommend the brand to others (amplification by recommendation), and to buy the brand again therefore creating loyalty to the brand (attachment). Thus, the whole experience that is offered with a product or service is at least as important as the product or service itself because as we’ve said: a satisfied consumer is likely to recommend the brand to others which means scope for more market shares for the companies.

Organizing competitions and making consumers participate in and contribute actively to the brand is maybe not such a bad idea after all?