If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.
Every professional in FMCG (Fast Moving Customer Goods) industry can relate to this fact. Whether you consider supermarket, giant shopping malls, or the grocery shops at the corners of the streets, ‘consumerization’ is the most common trait you will come across.
We are living in the customer-centric era. And the year of 2018 added more into that. Not only brands, but small businesses also have prioritized customers and their needs above all. Over the decade, shoppers are given highest importance due to the rise of personalized, customer-centric experience.
Right from machines, media, management, marketing, and sales, FMCG is one of the rapidly-growing industries worldwide. The FMCG sector has been witnessing a noteworthy growth through the technological shift and has succeeded to meet the adapting needs of consumers.
FMCG market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.6 and is expected to reach US$ 103.7 billion by 2020, according to the IBEF report.
This article talks about the trends that will shape the future of the FMCG industry in 2019. While technology is transforming the way of doing business, customer preferences, faster delivery, and accurate data analysis can help you stay ahead of the competition.
Let’s Predict Which Trends Will Be Changing The Face Of The FMCG Industry In 2019.
Unleash Advanced Analytics To Usher In Effective Decision-Making Process
Most businesses have understood the importance of analysis to make their business flourish. Retailers, manufacturers, and marketers have started relying on advanced analysis to predict the demand for the product, emerging market, and customer needs.
The goal will remain the same in 2019: Turn data into information, and information into insights that can help in predictive analysis. Data and predictive analysis will become a more crucial element for FMCG because that helps figure out what to sell, when, and where.
There is an array of factors that can contribute to the accurate analysis: (the following can be the best sources of data that needs analysis)
- Automated tools to track sales, distribution, and every sale activity
- Tracking real-time ordering and delivering
- Measuring the accurate number of sold goods and demand forecasting with the help of business intelligence tools
- Offline and online commerce activities
- Promotion and marketing campaign to stay connected with customers
- Keeping track of all the distribution channels
- Region-wise sales activities to identify real-time scenario of products
- Efficient, quick, and powerful sales force
Insights-driven marketing will surely become a key trait to generate significant ROI along with a number of growth opportunities. Using predictive analytics to create advanced, highly-personalized, and sustainable strategies for FMCG is one of the major trends to watch out for in 2019.
Customer Convenience To Capture The Attention:
Customer service should not be a department. It should be the entire company.
– Tony Hsieh
No doubt, groundbreaking product ideas and marketing campaigns are certainly going to win, but you can’t overlook the customer-centric shift that opened the way for exceptional customer experiences.
Customers have an abundance of alternatives for the same product and hence, customer loyalty became more significant over the period of time. For brands, rewarding their customers for their loyalty requires more strategic efforts by putting a lot of emphasis on customer convenience. Likewise,
- In-home delivery to create the buzz
- A wide variety of ready-to-go food options
- Hyper-connected and rapidly-serving chain of goods
- Personalized recommendations for products
- More flavors, types, and innovative experience to have a competitive edge
Data will be used as a crucial budget to drive enhanced customer engagements. Retailers are leveraging ‘digital’ to provide secure, comfortable, and extraordinary customer experience.
Effective Promotion and Closer Customer Engagements:
Every brand seems to have a proper plan of branding regardless of the products and services they offer to the world.
Not only millennial but a majority of the customers are brand-obsessed at present. 2019 will see more of branding, long-term engagements, and innovations in marketing.
Marketer or entrepreneur, ostensibly or truly, trying to involve themselves in branding and that’s what they must do. But the purpose will be changed; it will revolve around users’ needs and ease.
Industries like FMCG understood the importance of quicker response, faster-delivery of perishable goods, and solutions to persuade customers’ fluctuated minds.
Our experts predict that the year of 2019 will be the year of usability and closer engagements.
What are your plans for marketing in 2019?
Health And Environment-Oriented Goods:
We are witnessing the movement of plastic ban across the world.
We have seen that customers have taken a stand against products which harmful to the health and environments. Due to the rise of social media and effective marketing channels, customers become knowledgeable and raised their voices if something wasn’t in their favor.
This is a huge change.
Health-conscious and environment-conscious goods will be given priority over other types of products. Paperless and plastic ban movements have clearly given hint towards the awareness of clean, less-polluted, and healthy environment.
Omnichannel eCommerce And Faster FinTech Solutions:
You have to be where your customers are and the fact is, your customers are everywhere.
Due to globalization in eCommerce, we are observing that the gap is thinning between domestic and non-domestic commerce. Contradictory to this, many reports have said that people are choosing local brands over global ones as they wanted the authenticity of brands, particularly in the food and beverage industry.
However, the FMCG industry requires staying in harmony with manufacturing, advanced supply chain, wider distribution network, and most importantly with customers’ needs.
eCommerce made shopping simpler by giving customers a multitude of choices, secure payment options, and convenience of offline/online shopping. eCommerce is everywhere and so the customers are.
Omnichannel eCommerce is all about serving your customer by prioritizing their convenience. Powerful influencers, stronger social media presence, use of modern digital solutions to offer 24*7 assistance, omnichannel brand presence, and personalization will surely level up the strategy of FMCG growth.
How You Will Raise Your FMCG Game In 2019?
If you are associated with FMCG industry, you must pay attention to the aforementioned trends to strengthen your strategies. Digital tools are bound to make a change whether you are a retailer, manufacturer, marketer, supplier, or distributor.
Which tools are you using? How you are keeping up with the changes in the industry? Your answers will be helping us to understand you well. Leave us a comment below and also tell us about your predictions for 2019.
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