Hi. Welcome to expert talks at InsightsNow, in this video, we’ll talk about how Direct to Consumer or D2C businesses can better understand their customer feedback data and leverage it to develop their existing and new products.

The D2C business currently has around 11 to 12% of the overall global eCommerce market, and it is estimated that over the next 7 to 8 years, it will grow at a CAGR of around 22% to 23% and nearly double its share of the global eCommerce market. And this will happen on the back of a few things. 

Number one, markets like India, where D2C businesses are fairly underrepresented, are likely to see a lot more rapid adoption and growth. 

And number two, global consumer brands have been increasingly focused on their own D2C business, That is because it gives them a first-hand connection with their end consumers, which is very, very important for them to develop their new products and strategies. 

So, D2C brands will need to understand customer feedback data both about their own brands as well as competing brands, And this data is available from a variety of sources. So it could be customer feedback or review data that is available on the brand’s own website or eCommerce app. It could be available as comments and mentions on their own social media page, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. 

They could also gather additional data by running customer feedback surveys along the various trigger points of a customer journey, Or they could use a one-on-one or focus group with a certain set of target customers to gather a little more in-depth information. 

Equally, there are third-party feedback platforms like Trustpilot and Yelp where customers may leave their comments both negative and positive. And that is something the brand can leverage equally if they are listed in the marketplaces like Amazon, clients may have written product reviews there, and that could be one more source of information that could be available to the brand. 

So essentially, it’s a combination of first-party and third-party data that is available to the brand for them to understand the customer feedback and leverage it better.

So, when it comes to customer feedback data about their own brand, businesses could look at one the type of feedback rating reviews that a customer leaves on the company’s website or eCommerce app. Or they could look at the reviews and ratings provided by a customer when she is presented with a survey during the course of her shopping journey. And then they could see if there is a correlation between the feedback provided and the real purchase behavior of that particular customer. 

Secondly, they could compile all the subjective mentions, comments, and feedback that is available about the brand both on their own social channels, website, e-commerce apps, and all third-party review platforms like Trustpilot and Yelp, and then use text mining to understand, One is the sentiment of customers. Are they positively, negatively, or mutually disposed toward that particular brand? 

Number two, do a keyword analysis to understand where these words and phrases are used. Is it during the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel and try and get a sense of the intentionality and stance of customers? 

Number three, use a trend analysis to see if a particular sentiment or connection, or intentionality is changing over a period of time. So this would give a sense to the company about customer feedback about their own brand. So let us now discuss how companies can leverage customer feedback data about competing brands. So, I’ll talk of a four-step process. 

The first one is a short listing of a set of competing brands, and how a business could go about doing this is they could pick the keywords that are relevant to their own product or brand positioning and then use them in the google Ads planner or do a generic Google search to see the type of brands that are coming at the top of the search or the ones that are really bidding for those same keywords. 

They could parallelly look at their own top followers of the brand on their Facebook page or Twitter page and then check out which are the other brands and their top followers also connected with. And then using the source set of data, they could create a short list of eight to ten brands that they need to go a little deeper into. 

The second step is to understand the relative weightage of these eight to ten brands. So a good way is to see if all these brands, including the company’s own brand, are listed on the marketplace, like Amazon. They could see the number of feedback received by each of them during a predefined period, and that would give a sense of the level of market share each of them enjoys. And they could pick possibly the top four to five out of the competing brands and let go of the others. 

Once they have done this, they could now use social media mining tools to understand the type of demographic profile of those brands and the engagement rates that they enjoy. And then again if they need to further prune the list to ensure that the type of demographic profile that the competing brand support is relevant to the type of profile and audience the company is targeting. 

Lastly, by using tools like Hootsuite, mention, etc, they could get an understanding of the sentiment and the keyword analytics and trends about the competing brand’s product, the type of concerns or positive reviews the customers are talking about, and then using that combination and then supplementing it with their own brand feedback. They have a holistic understanding of their target audience segment. 

These are a few D2C brands that have intelligently leveraged customer feedback on social media for their product development. Casper released prototypes of its Casper Wave mattress, which is a premium mattress to some of its customers, and sought feedback over social media to further enhance the product Warby Parker frequently crowdsources ideas and feedback on its new product range, and it helps them in fine-tuning the range better. SaturnBird develops its specialty instant coffee to address the needs of a niche youth segment that was looking for instant coffee which tastes fresh. 

So these are a few examples. I hope you found this video interesting. Please do follow us @insightsnow.cloud Thank you.