Timing is everything for brands

WE Communications' latest Content Matters series, with its first report focusing on India, suggests that timing is crucial in courting consumers, with specific life events such as promotions at work, having a strong influence on brand purchase decisions.

The best time to connect with a consumer and 'convert them' to your brand has a lot to do with what stage of life they are in.

According to a new research report by WE, in India, getting one’s first job and getting a promotion were the biggest catalysts for consumers considering a change of brand or product upgrade.

Mobile devices and tablets is the most considered category for those who’ve just landed their first jobs, while promotions at work were the strongest influencer for a new purchase or brand upgrade when it comes to products in the automobiles sector, followed by luxury goods.

This was the key finding of WE’s first report in its third annual Content Matters series, which focuses on how customers are engaging with brands in India.

This year’s report extends the scope of query to include time and sought to understand the impact of life stages, time of day, day of week and month on purchase decisions and advocacy behaviour, in addition to nature of content and platforms.

In addition, the report found that life events such as becoming a parent or moving house had very little impact on brand upgrades or new purchases across the sectors identified.

Unsurprisingly, marriage was the life event that had the strongest influence for travel and tourism-related purchases.

Siddharth Sankhe, WE's insights and analytics lead for Southeast Asia and India, said India's findings once again stand out in Content Matters as they have each year.

"When it comes to brand advocacy, Indian consumers are out there advocating their favourite brands to friends, family and colleagues," he told PRWeek Asia.

"However, when it comes to high risk categories like finance, banking, healthcare or automobiles, Indians are a little apprehensive advocating or recommending brands." 

Henry Wood, WE vice president and head of insight & analytics and creative for APAC, said the new impact of time data stream in the Content Matters study is a key metric for measuring brand change decisions. 

"All put together we believe Content Matters provides real insight in cutting through the clutter of complexity so often bandied about and allows brands and marketers to focus their budget on impactful communications," he said. 

The survey was conducted with 900 consumers, 300 each from Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Other key takeaways from the report include:

WhatsApp tops the list of favourite social media networks for content sharing, followed closely by Facebook.

Word of mouth and search engine are the top two common sources of information for making purchasing decisions, followed by company websites and review sites across industries.

Weekends account for about 66 percent of purchase information searches in the whole week, with Saturday taking the top spot, except for finance and banking.

The 5pm till midnight timeslot accounts for about a third of information search across almost all the key industries except finance and banking.