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Winning in the Age of Personalization
Global survey compares consumer expectations against retail and consumer goods company initiatives
About This Report
In the fall of 2015, Mindtree commissioned independent market research firm Vanson Bourne to discover:
 Where are retail and consumer goods organizations on their digital journey?
 How do the consumers using the products of these organizations perceive the digital experience?
 What do consumers expect from these organizations moving forward?
To obtain this valuable insight, Mindtree surveyed 360 buyers from retail and consumer goods industries. In addition,
Mindtree also surveyed almost 6,000 consumers. The regions/countries where the interviews were conducted
included the U.S., Europe (UK, Germany, Benelux), and APAC (Australia, New Zealand, India, China). Respondents from
the organizations that were interviewed had at least 2,000 employees.
Due to rounding out, not all percentage totals in this report equal 100%.
About
Vanson Bourne
Vanson Bourne is an independent specialist in market research for the technology sector. Their reputation for robust
and credible research-based analysis is founded upon rigorous research principles and their ability to seek the
opinions of senior decision makers across technical and business functions, in all business sectors and all major
markets. For more information, visit www.vansonbourne.com
Table of Contents:
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 04
The Phy-gital Journey Begins and Ends with Personalization ............................................................................... 05
Mindtree Phy-gital Journey Survey: Retail Consumer Expectations vs. Seller Initiatives ...................... 06
Retail and Consumer Goods Survey – Global Highlights .......................................................................................... 07
Retail and Consumer Goods Survey – Region by Region Highlights ................................................................. 10
What Our Retail and Consumer Goods Survey Results Mean to You ................................................................ 14
A Framework for Retail and Consumer Goods Shopper Personalization ......................................................... 15
Summary – Winning in the Age of Personalization ...................................................................................................... 16
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
Introduction
As e-commerce continues to drive new revenue opportunities around the globe for retail and
consumer goods companies, customers are gaining more control of their shopping experience.
Unlike traditional shoppers who were limited to buying goods and services from physical
stores, today’s consumers demand more convenience and less friction across their “phy-gital”
(physical +digital) journeys from the brands they shop with. They want to use their favorite
mobile devices to shop from anywhere at any time. And they want companies to understand
their needs and suggest personalized offers based on their shopping preferences.
A new study by Mindtree (www.mindtree.com) suggests that shoppers expect to reach their
ideal mix of online versus offline commerce over the next three years. To maximize profits
and drive new opportunities in this consumer-driven landscape, retail and consumer goods
companies must develop strategies to deliver a truly personalized shopping experience.
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
04
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
The Phy-gital
Journey
Begins and
Ends with
Personalization
It’s a well-known business axiom that repeat customers drive current profitability while new customers drive current
growth and future profitability. Yet, acquiring and retaining customers is harder than ever before. That’s because
consumers are expecting personalization―experiences tailored to their needs and preferences based on their implicit
behavior and explicit permission―across all interactions with sellers. Not delivering on this appears as a failure in the
eyes of the consumer. The impact can be huge: for every customer experience failure, brands lose an average of 65%
of that customer’s wallet share during the following year1.
In the past, consumers have been invited into stores, websites and mobile apps controlled by companies. But over the
next few years, consumers will push sellers beyond these boundaries―from social media “buy” buttons to over-the-top
messaging services with integrated payments such as WeChat to concierge services and full-featured mobile wallets,
these will all become selling channels.
In return, consumers are willing to provide rich digital body language―online and offline behavior that signals their
intention and preferences. However, this digital body language is all but lost on sellers, especially in-store. That’s
because until now personalization has largely been the domain of online retailers or the e-commerce teams of brick
and mortar sellers.
To stay relevant, sellers need to embed themselves in the ongoing phy-gital lives of consumers and earn the right
to be part of a continuous stream of engagement. But, they can’t do it by following traditional means of marketing,
communications and customer service. Personalization is their way in.
Cindy Waxer, Direct Marketing, September 1, 2015 – It’s Time to Face Marketing’s Impact on Customer Experience.
http://www.dmnews.com/customer-experience/its-time-to-face-marketings-impact-on-customer-experience/article/435386/
1
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
05
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
Mindtree
Phy-gital Journey
Survey: Retail
Consumer
Expectations vs.
Seller Initiatives
To help retail and consumer goods companies understand and capitalize on the changing nature of how consumers
explore, engage, purchase and advocate a product or service, Mindtree surveyed 5794, people across the U.S., Europe
and Asia-Pacific (APAC). To gauge how sellers realize how shopper behavior across the phy-gital journey impacts their
business and digital investments, Mindtree also surveyed 360 decision makers from retail and consumer goods
companies in those same regions.
The survey provided several key insights that point to a digital divide between shoppers and those who serve them.
For example, around six in ten decision makers identified themselves as pioneers in adopting and investing in digital
technologies. However, while these companies are in a digital transformation mode, there is a mismatch between
what consumers want from online channels versus what companies are investing in. Let’s take a closer look at the
survey findings.
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
06
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
Retail and
Consumer Goods
Survey – Global
Highlights
The consumer survey
included 5,794 adult
consumers who made online
purchases between October
2014 and October 2015, and
360 retail/consumer goods
decision makers from each
of the three regions. Here
are several valuable insights
the study revealed.
01 Retail and consumer goods companies are finally starting to understand
that their online presence is about serving customers as much as it is
about selling to customers.
67%
ACCESSIBILITY
66%
CUSTOMER
SERVICE LEVELS
SHOPPER
ENGAGEMENT
56%
VALUE OFFERED
55%
02 Personalization is driving revenue growth for companies, but they don't invest in
it nearly as much as other features that have an unknown impact on revenue.






Providing more targeted promotions (58%) is a common way that organizations have improved their online
sales over the past 12 months.
To encourage online purchases, retailers are using personalized promotions on related products and
services shoppers have not purchased before (93%), personalized promotions for products customers
have purchased before (89%) and recommendations from peers (87%).
Retail organizations are using a variety of personalized ways to engage with their shoppers, including
social media campaigns (54%) subscription-based mobile app-based notifications (48%) and
recommendations for related purchases (46%).
Shopper data is captured in a wide variety of ways to support targeting and personalization: customer
profile data (91%), loyalty (88%), social media usage (76%) and others.
Less than half (44%) of respondents are planning to enhance the purchasing experience by sharing their customer data with other companies within
and across industries.
Contrary to their apparent conviction of the value of targeted, personalized customer engagement, less than one third (28%) of decision makers
confirmed that their organizations are investing in personalization to improve the online purchasing experience, compared to new payment methods
(54%) or shopping lists (51%).
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
07
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
03 Personalization is making customers spend more, but companies
don’t yet value personalization as an important factor in improving the
online experience.



Shoppers reported they made online purchase based on personalized promotions on related
products they had not purchased before (75%), promotions on products they had purchased before
(80%) and recommendations from peers (64%).
Around a fifth (19%) expect a more personalized customer experience online versus in-store
shopping.
Similarly, 19% of consumers see personalization as a website or application feature that improves
the online purchasing experience.
04 There is huge growth potential for companies in mobile apps.

Over the next three years, twice as many consumers (growing from 5% to 12%) say they expect to be using a
mobile device app to make purchases.
05
Online customers report that shopping cart cancellations is
largely due to unexpected surprises at checkout.

The vast majority of respondents (91%) ended purchase transactions due to
shipping costs (64%) or a price change at checkout (41%).
06 Most online consumers crave better search and compare and aggregate functions,
but many companies are investing in other features.



Consumers see ease of comparing products and pricing (57%) or the ability to target the product or service they are
seeking (55%) as benefits of shopping online over in-store.
Consumers want better search functions (34%), simpler, cleaner interfaces (33%), and compare and aggregate
functions (33%).
Decision makers, however, say that their organizations are investing in features such as expanded payment methods
(54%) and ability to create shopping lists (51%) to improve the online shopping experience.
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
08
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
07 Customers highly value online ratings and reviews (positive and negative) from other customers and
seek them out before making a purchase. While word of mouth (87%) is still the most common method
of sharing positive reviews, digital platforms are catching up.



Around half of the respondents reported that they sometimes share their positive and/or negative experiences across
digital platforms.
Consumers also commonly share positive and negative views on independent websites, where they have influence
over current and potential customers.
And, while 91% of consumers look at the reviews on the seller’s website, 82% look at reviews on independent
websites before committing to an online purchasing decision.
08 Customers are most likely to post positive reviews after a positive shopping experience, but are also
likely to post negative reviews about poor product quality or service.


A Significant number of respondents surveyed said the most common reasons they provide a
positive review are a good purchase experience (68%), good product quality (64%) and really
useful offers and deals (44%).
However, 68% of customers say they are likely to leave a negative review of poor quality
products, 57% are likely to do so because of misleading product information. Only 49% say they
would post a poor review if they received a poor purchase experience.
09 Retailers
have a huge opportunity to redirect digital marketing
BUY
campaign spends to improve return on marketing investment (ROMI).



More than half of the organizations surveyed confirmed that web (78%), social media (51%),
and in-store (55%) are key channels for digital marketing campaigns.
Digital marketing campaign effectiveness metrics such as cost to acquire a new customer (44%),
revenue per cost per impression (38%) and brand awareness metrics (28%) are useful, but not as
influential. For sellers, customer satisfaction (52%) remains the most commonly used and relied
on metric to measure digital marketing campaign effectiveness.
More than eight out of ten retailers want consumers to help them develop content creation
strategies (86%).
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
09
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
Retail and
Consumer Goods
Survey – Region
by Region Highlights
Here are some of the lessons and messages from the retail and consumer goods survey of 120 industry
decision makers and nearly 2000 consumers across each of the three regions of the U.S., Europe and
APAC.
01 Companies doing business in the three regions are finally starting to
understand that their online presence is about serving customers
as much as it is about selling to customers. In fact, more than half
perceive their organization to be adopting digital for various reasons.
ACCESSIBILITY
CUSTOMER SERVICE LEVELS
74%
63%
53%
71%
75%
62%
SHOPPER ENGAGEMENT
U.S.
Europe
VALUE OFFERED
60%
54%
44%
56%
65%
55%
APAC
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
10
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
02 Personalization is driving revenue growth for companies across the regions, but they don't invest in it
nearly as much as other features that have an unknown impact on revenue.






Providing more targeted promotions (U.S.: 64%|Europe: 50%|APAC: 58%) is a common way that buyers’ organizations
have improved their online sales over the past 12 months.
Approximately 9 out of 10 decision makers said personalized promotions on relevant products shoppers have not
purchased before (U.S.: 93%|Europe: 93%|APAC: 94%) or products customers have purchased before
(U.S.: 91%|Europe: 88%|APAC: 89%) or recommendations from peers (U.S.: 90%|Europe: 85%|APAC: 85%)
will encourage online purchases.
Decision makers reported that their organizations are using a variety of personalized ways to engage with their
shoppers: recommendations for suitable purchases (U.S.: 50%|Europe: 36%|APAC: 51%), social media campaigns.
(U.S.: 47%|Europe: 52%|APAC: 63%) and subscription-based mobile app-based notification (U.S.: 39%|Europe: 43%|APAC: 60%).
Shopper data is captured in a wide variety of ways to support targeting and personalization: customer profile data.
(U.S.: 87%|Europe: 94%|APAC: 92%), loyalty (U.S.: 87%|Europe: 88%|APAC: 88%), social media usage (U.S.: 72%|Europe: 75%|APAC: 79%),
and so on.
A wide range of respondents across the three regions (U.S.: 46%|Europe: 33%|APAC: 55%) are planning to enhance the purchasing experience
by sharing their customer data with other companies within and across industries.
However, decision makers in the three regions confirmed that their organizations are investing in personalization (U.S.: 31%|Europe: 18%|
APAC: 36%) to improve the online purchasing experience compared to the ability to pay in a number of ways (U.S.: 51%|Europe: 53%|
APAC: 58%), and shopping cart additions (U.S.: 53%|Europe: 34%|APAC: 54%).
03 Personalization in each of these three regions is making customers purchase more, but retailers don't yet
value personalization as an important feature to improve online experience.



A large number of shoppers believe personalized promotions on relevant products they have
not purchased before (U.S.: 77%|Europe: 66%|APAC: 83%) or products customers have
purchased before (U.S.: 82%|Europe: 69%|APAC: 87%) or recommendations from peers will
encourage online purchase (U.S.: 64%|Europe: 53%|APAC: 76%).
A much smaller number (U.S.: 16%|Europe: 11%|APAC: 30%) expect a more personalized
customer experience to come from online purchasing that would not come from in-store.
Similarly a growing number of consumers see personalization (U.S.: 18%|Europe: 15%|
APAC: 25%) would improve the online purchasing experience.
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
11
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
04 There is huge potential for companies in the U.S., Europe and APAC to find growth
in mobile apps.

Over the next three years, up to three times more (U.S.: 2% to 7%|Europe: 2% to 8%|APAC: 10% to 22%)
consumers will be using a mobile app channel to make retail purchases.
05 Shopping cart abandonment for online customers in these three areas of the
world is largely due to unexpected surprises at the last step of checkout –
such as shipping costs or price changes.
CANCEL

The vast majority of consumer respondents (U.S.: 91%|Europe: 89%|APAC: 93%) have ended the
transaction process early predominantly because of shipping costs (U.S.: 73%|Europe: 60%|APAC: 59%)
or price change at checkout (U.S.: 37%|Europe: 36%|APAC: 51%).
06 Most customers in the U.S., Europe and APAC crave improved search and compare/aggregate functions,
but many companies are investing in things like shopping lists,
wish lists and social features.



More than half of the consumer respondents from all three regions see ease of comparing
products and pricing (U.S.: 61%|Europe: 55%|APAC: 55%) or being able to search for the
product they are looking (U.S.: 61%|Europe: 51%|APAC: 54%) as benefits of
shopping online over in-store.
Around one third of the consumers want better search functions
(U.S.: 33%|Europe: 33%|APAC: 36%), simplicity in interface
(U.S.: 31%|Europe: 27%|APAC: 40%) and compare and aggregate functions
(U.S.: 34%|Europe: 28%|APAC: 35%).
On the other hand, decision makers reported that their organizations are
investing in features such as shopping cart additions (U.S.: 53%|Europe: 34%|APAC: 54%),
multiple ways to pay (U.S.: 51%|Europe: 53%|APAC: 58%) and creating shopping lists
(U.S.: 45%|Europe: 55%|APAC: 54%) to improve the online shopping experience.
SEARCH
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
12
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
07 Customers in the three regions highly value online ratings and
reviews (positive and negative) of other customers, and seek them
out before making a purchase.




Around two-fifths or more of U.S. and Europe and around three-fifths or more of APAC
consumer respondents reported that they sometimes share their positive or negative
experiences across digital platforms.
While word of mouth (positive – U.S.: 86%|Europe: 84%|APAC: 90%) and (negative – U.S.: 77%|Europe: 76%|APAC: 80%) is still the most common
method of sharing, digital platforms are catching up.
Consumers are commonly sharing both positive (U.S.: 56%|Europe: 53%|APAC: 78%) and negative (U.S.: 48%|Europe: 49%|APAC: 68%) views on
independent websites, where they will have influence over current customer base and other potential customers, too.
A large number of consumers (U.S.: 90%|Europe: 89%|APAC: 94%) look at the reviews on the seller’s website, and (U.S.: 77%|Europe: 79%|
APAC: 90%) look at reviews on independent websites before committing to an online purchasing decision.
08 Region by region, customers are likely to post positive reviews after a positive shopping experience,
but most likely to post negative reviews due to poor quality product or service.


More than six of ten consumer respondents surveyed said the most likely reasons encouraging
them to provide a positive review comes from having a good purchase experience
(U.S.: 69%|Europe: 64%|APAC: 69%), good product quality (U.S.: 69%|Europe: 58%|APAC: 63%),
and around two fifths or more for offers and deals (U.S.: 44%|Europe: 37%|APAC: 51%).
However, most respondents (U.S.: 68%|Europe: 64%|APAC 71%) are likely to leave a negative
review because of poor quality products, more than half (U.S.: 64%|Europe: 56%|APAC: 50%)
are likely to do so because of misleading product information, and about half
(U.S.: 52%|Europe: 49%|APAC: 46%) would do this if they received a poor purchase experience.
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
13
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
What Our Retail
and Consumer
Goods Survey
Results Mean to You
There are a lot of lessons to glean from our study, but when it comes to meeting the three-year window that consumers
have targeted for reaching an ideal mix of online and in-store purchasing, we at Mindtree believe that a focus on
personalization will be crucial. We all know there is great value in personalized services for improving customer
engagement―better targeted pricing and promotions of products and services and purchase processes tailored to
individual preferences―to help make the decision to buy an easier one.
Driven by data from multiple sources fed into smart algorithms, personalization allows retail and consumer goods
companies to target the right people, at the right time, in the right place, on the right device, with the right content,
creating seamless commerce and a community of advocates.
There is no shortage of marketing, analytics and personalization solutions. But, without a standard framework that
can help drive a personalized customer experience across channels, organizations are forced to use a patchwork
of disparate systems that limit agility and increase costs.
Successful personalization will only work if companies have the right digital underpinnings at the broadest and
deepest levels. At Mindtree, we believe there are four cornerstones crucial to achieving true digital transformation
and success.
CREATE
SHAPE
digital customer
experiences
new, innovative
business models
DEVELOP
DIGITIZE
“sense-and-respond”
systems
the value chain
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
14
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
A Framework for
Retail and Consumer
Goods Shopper
Personalization
Our experts have developed
a Framework for Omnichannel
Personalization based on
years of experience helping
global leaders transform
their customer experience.
This four-part framework
guides organizations to
develop and execute successful personalization strategies.
To get started, retail and
consumer goods companies
can add relevance and trust
to the shopping experience.
This framework can help
them get there.
2
1
A unified view of
customer profile,
preference, purchase
and behavioral data
Customer
Context
An enabling platform
of analytics tools,
proprietary algorithms
and human creativity
Personalization
Engine
Omnichannel
Personalization
Framework
40%
4
More participative,
transparent customer
data management
practices
Code of Honor
Offer & Content
Execution
3
Consistent, cross-channel,
multi-format, deviceoptimized execution of
personalized offers and
messages
1 Customer Context: Consumers leave a rich trail of their “digital body language,” which companies can use to enrich
the shopping experience. Constructing a unified view of customer profiles, preferences, purchase and behavior
data forms the foundation of the framework. By combining data such as location, weather, social media sentiment
and demographics, companies can understand the context in which consumers engage with them.
2 Personalization Engine: With a better understanding of customer motivations and communication preferences,
companies can supercharge their messaging and engagement strategy for individual customers or segments.
Organizations can acquire this understanding using a combination of analytic tools and proprietary algorithms that
tie customer analytics to their business model.
3 Offer and Content Execution: To succeed with omnichannel personalization, organizations need consistent,
flawless, cross-channel, multi-format offers and messages. Companies can overcome channel and device
challenges with marketing automation tools, digital content repositories and service level agreements (SLAs) with
partners to help cost-effectively manage marketing IT operations.
4 Code of Honor: Companies must balance greater personalization of the shopper experience with the inherent risks
associated with managing large amounts of customer data. Specifically, they must begin by being more open
about how they use customer data to personalize the shopping experience, give customers more control over what
data is used, and go beyond current regulations to ensure the highest data security standards.
www.mindtree.com
[email protected]
15
The Age of Personalization: A Global Report on Retail and Consumer Goods by Mindtree
Summary –
Winning in the
Age of
Personalization
Winning the global consumer in the age of personalization is critical for gaining an advantage in an increasingly
competitive environment. Companies need to think about how to deliver personalization across the purchasing
journey. They should work on creating unique customer personas by employing the huge number of data streams
they have access to. And they should apply analytical models to finely segment customers.
In addition, retail and consumer goods companies should use this segmentation knowledge to deploy an activation
layer to engage customers with the right information and offers. Finally, companies should do all of this beneath a
code of honor―maintaining the customer’s trust about using data to personalize services and offers.
With the right framework for omnichannel personalization, retail and consumer goods companies can shape
innovative business models and develop sense-and-respond systems to deliver compelling experiences that meet
customer expectations and drive growth.
Mindtree was “Born Digital” and continues to bring an extraordinary depth of experience across the entire digital
value chain. With its strong blend of planning and execution, Mindtree can steer companies like yours through the
personalization journey.
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ABOUT MINDTREE
Mindtree [NSE: MINDTREE] delivers digital transformation and technology services from ideation to execution, enabling Global 2000
clients to outperform the competition. “Born digital,” Mindtree takes an agile, collaborative approach to creating customized solutions
across the digital value chain. At the same time, our deep expertise in infrastructure and applications management helps optimize your IT
into a strategic asset. Whether you need to differentiate your company, reinvent business functions or accelerate revenue growth, we can
get you there. Visit www.mindtree.com to learn more.
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16