DIGITAL STRATEGY & CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Post-COVID Digital Retail: Safeguarding Against the Intention-Behaviour Gap

The next phase of uncertainty poses new risks to businesses that have adapted to pandemic trading norms.

Image by Uriel Mont.

Pandemic-induced trading conditions shifted the perception of digital channels from a consideration to a lifeline for many retailers. Now, a key focus for the recovery of their industry is to secure ongoing sales from the 80% of consumers who plan to keep their recently discovered digital shopping habits¹.

Unfortunately, our ability as individuals to follow through on even the best intentions is notoriously fickle². That same unpredictability is now lurking as a risk for retailers, meaning they must take steps to prevent any existing customer intent from fading into a lost opportunity.

Multichannel retailers who relied heavily on digital to continue trading amidst real-world restrictions now face a choice. Should budgets drive deeper digital channel integration with their core business operations, or will they revert to traditional pre-pandemic fail-safes in the hope that customers will keenly return to face-to-face purchasing?

Many businesses will choose to pursue growth through digital channels with strong tailwinds. Those rushing to capitalise on promising pandemic-sampled consumer indicators risk failing to consider that these measures contain hollow intentions — the difference between what shoppers say and then do in reality.

Consumer online purchasing is predicted to continue growing after COVID-19. Source: McKinsey & Company.

What is the Intention-Behaviour Gap?

Any shortfall between what people do in reality versus their plans is known as an intention-behaviour gap. These shortfalls are so present in our lives that only 50% of our intentions may ever become realities³.

Intention-behaviour gaps matter in commerce too. Forecasts that pair pandemic-driven online retail results with positive digital shopping intent risk falling victim to the same effect. Any consumer feedback gathered under COVID restrictions carries a substantial disconnect from a recovering retail environment. Consumer options and outlooks will shift, which inherently compromises the stability of their intent over time.

For that reason, strategic decision-makers must continually question how valid these indicators are and whether or not they accurately describe the emerging retail environment.

We only act on a portion of our intentions.

Reducing the Risk

Knowing the threats of consumer intention-behaviour gaps allows you to reframe the danger as a question: what steps can you take to reduce the gap and de-risk the outcome?

• Position products and services towards consumers as part of their ideal self. Individuals who actively shape their self-concept are more likely to take actions that support who they want to become⁴. Their identity goal and the association to your offering must continually evolve to prevent social acknowledgment from compromising the future likelihood of acting similarly⁵.

Products can become badges that signify to others that the owner is a member of a certain group. Source: Garmin on Facebook.

• Make the buying experience for your customers enjoyable, regardless of channel or geography. The way a person feels about performing an activity can be more influential on their behaviour than the outcomes of the action. A good or bad experience will be a contributing factor in the likelihood of that behaviour persisting⁶.
• Incrementally nurture shopping habits through the domino effect. Once you overcome the most difficult first purchase, behavioural consistency can develop via a pathway that promotes growth, reinforcing desirable actions over time⁷.

Incentivising the first purchase can unlock the pathway to repeated sales that grow in both value and conversion rate over time. Source: Fulton on Really Good Emails.

• Employ choice architecture to assist decision making. Consumer judgments can be influenced by presenting options in different ways⁸. Reducing complexity and showcasing value can help to encourage shoppers to move past indecision and take action on a purchase.

Simplify decision making by drawing attention to specific channels, then highlighting a single purchasable option as the best value. Source: The Economist.

• Continually reinforce positive buying intentions over an extended duration. Stable intent across time is one of the most effective markers of predicting a follow-through to action⁹.

De-risking future customer relationships will demand collaboration from multiple departments and roles within your business. It takes a joint effort to implement these tactics successfully. Discuss the options early, then plan, test, and iterate well.

Intention-behaviour gaps can be positively affected by the way you engage with customers.

Setting Your Own Strategy:

Every effort to minimise intention-behaviour gaps in returning retail customers should complement your business-level strategy. Engaging ill-fitting concepts on theoretical promise alone only risks hampering your recovery efforts with convoluted shopper experiences. Instead, focus on achieving the right fit between the message, touchpoint, and customer to drive the desired result.

• Before anything else — record any assumptions that you’re making about future consumer behaviours given the current indicators. Give yourself the capacity to measure and adjust your strategy against the implementation as data becomes available.
• Build review stages into your strategy to assess the accuracy of your earlier predictions before increasing investments into successful activations and revising or removing any poor performers.
• Embed your strategy with contingencies and budget reserves to empower your business with optionality. The ability to respond to new market signals and increase investments into successful activations is essential.
• Know which channels your consumers are active in and maintain relevant connections with them. Prepare for a shift in channel usage, shopper needs, and individual mindsets as customers increasingly return to work and life outside of their own homes. Embrace the chance to trial new channels, messaging, and promotional activations — success in this environment isn’t documented yet.
• Take every opportunity to protect your existing customer base from churning through disenchantment with your offering or falling for the allure of your competitors. Conversely, look for ways to harness these forces to resonate with and acquire new customers.

Consumers tried new brands for a diverse range of reasons during the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: McKinsey.

• Seek to understand who your customers want to become as individuals emerging into a post-COVID world. Talk to them, collect feedback, and apply this to how you position your products and services as a part of their imagined self-concept moving forward.
• Revise your purchase and retention pathways to accommodate the new ways that you do business. Employ the domino effect into customer journeys by reinforcing positive interactions with your business as incremental steps towards a new vision of the ideal customer-brand relationship.
• Prioritise convenience and flexibility for customers in response to the unpredictable environment around them. Aim to make the entire experience simple — or better yet, enjoyable. Utilise platform analytics alongside shopper feedback to identify and alleviate the shopping stressors that result in lost sales through abandonment.
• Transform complex evaluations that cause buyer paralysis into more manageable concepts. Universal ratings for safety or showcasing awards from trusted authorities as value markers eases the cognitive effort of choosing between brands, products, or services.
• Offer default selections that simplify the path to purchase for shoppers facing a range of options. Default selections should stem a genuine desire to assist the buyer: the best value, an expert’s choice, the most popular with similar customers, or previous individual preferences.

Pandemic recovery strategies must provide stability to customer intent, then convert that intent into action. Underpinning this focus should be the ability to measure and react, with options and budgets on standby should conditions change or results fall short of expectations.

The environment ahead of us will emerge from a spectrum of possibilities that you’ll need to plan for — even though many of these realities will never eventuate. Planning with this in mind will prepare you for success no matter the uncertainty.

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Citations

[1] McKinsey & Company. (August 4, 2020). The great consumer shift: Ten charts that show how US shopping behavior is changing.

[2] White Rose Research Online. (September 5, 2016). The Intention–Behavior Gap.

[3] American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. (June 22, 2016). Why We Don’t “Just Do It”.

[4] European Journal of Social Psychology. (July 14, 2000). Self-schemas and the theory of planned behaviour.

[5] Psychological Science. (May 1, 2009). When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap?

[6] British Journal of Social Psychology. (April 19, 2013). The temporal stability and predictive validity of affect-based and cognition-based intentions.

[7] Harvard Business Review. (July 1, 2019). The Elusive Green Consumer.

[8] The Social Science Journal. (December 1, 2008). Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.

[9] Health Psychology. (March 21, 2002). The theory of planned behavior and healthy eating.