Finding The Consumer’s Sweet Spot: Q&A With Jaguar Land Rover’s Hannah Naji
A consumer’s sweet spot is when a brand hit strikes resonant emotional chords with its targeted consumers. The average consumer is exposed to a plethora of marketing messages from brands a day and in order for a brand to cut through the clutter, its message has to be of emotional resonance. The Berries interviewed Hannah Naji, Brand Director of Jaguar Land Rover MENAP Region, to get her take on how to connect with a consumer’s sweet spot.
BB: Consumer insights are mostly referred to as the tiny motivations that prompt people to choose brands over others. In other words, they’re ‘breakthroughs’ for brands. How can brands generate shopper insights?
HN: Consumer Insights are the little windows into just some of the myriad (and complex) fears, hopes and motivations that people have in their daily lives and future aspirations. What great brands do is uncover and connect to these motivations, fears and hopes in a way that is genuine to the brand and transforms the way people think about the brand or the category. At Jaguar Land Rover, we have gone a step above this by building our ‘Customer First Principles’ on actual consumer insights. The five principles which resonated most with our customers are ‘Personalisation’, ‘Make Me Feel Special’, ‘Transparent’, ‘Dependable’ and ‘Easy to Do Business With’ and these are now the fundamental insights driving customer-centricity throughout our entire organisation.
BB: A customer journey is not mapped by how customers feel at any given point in the journey but rather how they feel over the course of the entire journey. How can brands effectively evaluate their customer journeys?
HN: Each interaction that a customer or potential customer has with a brand becomes a potential to turn that customer into an advocate, or at the other extreme an alienated customer. So a customer journey at Jaguar Land Rover is recognizing, respecting and connecting with our customers or potential customers at every point of interaction that they have with our brand. This means having continual feedback loops at each point along that journey, as well as the right systems to communicate with customers and address their concerns.
Our retailers play a major role in delivering bespoke experiences our customers will love for life. That is why we at Jaguar Land Rover put great trust in all our authorised retailers, as they play a crucial role in the success of our business through the interaction they have with our current and potential customers across their showrooms and service centers.
BB: It’s widely known, and too often forgotten, that brands stand or fall based on the customer experiences they create. How can brands make use of the consumer insights in enhancing their customer experiences.
HN: Data-driven insights allow us to create personalized and memorable touchpoints for our customers which ultimately ensures a seamless customer experience. For example, and with smart phone penetration in the GCC amongst the highest in the world, we have combined Land Rover’s off-roading heritage and passion for innovation to create one of the first and most advanced social mobile application for off-road enthusiasts in this region.
The app known simply as ‘Ardhi in Arabic’ or ‘MYLAND, has been designed as an essential tool for regional off-roaders of any level to chart, save and share their off-roading adventures. This app was a result of a research conducted around consumer behaviour and was driven by insights from that research.
BB: The moment your brand strikes an emotional chord that resonates with your target consumer’s internal sweet spot, is the moment your gains occur. Can you mention some ins and out on how brands can find out about their consumers’ sweet spot?
HN: At Jaguar Land Rover we are big fans of continual feedback loops. Whether that be through customer satisfaction surveys, independent research or other forms of analytics. Testing is another good way to find out customer preferences – offering consumers choice and seeing which options work better together. Brands need to be continuously trialling new things and evolving by getting feedback from customers and potential customers and then tweaking their product or offer accordingly. Again, this is something that our authorised retailers play a huge role at, by engaging with our showroom visitors and our existing clients through the after service department.
BB: With the rise of e-commerce, big brands shouldn’t ignore the online sphere and work on mirroring a pleasant and empowered customer experiences in the cyber world. Can you shed some lights on how e-commerce has reshaped the way brands design customer experiences?
HN: Digital has introduced us to terms like ‘User Experience’ and ‘User Interface design’. Brands have increasingly focused on their design strategy while keeping consumer experiences in mind. Even at a retail level, shop fronts are now designed to be more welcoming and easier to navigate and for customers to find exactly what they are looking for. Power now rests with the consumer, who can easily vote with their fingers by clicking away as they used to vote with their feet by walking away! This means that every touch point must be optimized and enhanced to serve the needs that our customers have whether that be searching for information, wanting to find a good deal, closing a deal, looking for product or service experience, or after sales service.
At Jaguar Land Rover, we recently launched our very own ‘Buy Online’ e-commerce platform, where customers can book a new car online direct from inventory thereby enhancing the vehicle purchase journey. In partnership with all our GCC authorized retailers, the platform facilitates customers’ car-buying process through the websites www.findalandrover.com and www.findajaguar.com.
By adding speed, ease and clarity to the experience of ultimately taking ownership of a Jaguar or Land Rover vehicle, we believe we have found a premium platform for our customers who lead busy lives yet want choice and convenience when selecting a new car. This dynamic and exciting digital experience is accessible through dedicated retailer websites for our Jaguar and Land Rover customers, which seamlessly guides them through the process of selecting a vehicle that is right for them. The added value is that through the website the customer can go on a journey to select a vehicle from a live inventory, receive a finance quotation and finally book their desired vehicle. Alternatively, if they already know what they want, the ordering process is even simpler.
BB: With the rapid growth of multicultural customers all over the world and their unparalleled influence on the marketplace, brands should consider strategies that are inclusive to appeal to these critical consumers. Please comment
HN: Technology has allowed the sharing of information to happen at unprecedented speed and this has opened up ideas from other cultures and cross-fertilization between people, countries and industry. This has made the world more inclusive and diverse. Therefore, a brand that wishes to remain relevant should embrace diversity and cater to sub-sections of society. This is something that we strongly believe in at Jaguar Land Rover, especially that we operate internationally in markets that are very culturally rich and dynamic.
BB: As technology revolutionizes shopping, it’s creating a new consumer demographic, the one that’s always plugged in and ready to spend. Can you shed some lights on how should brands engage with this digital savvy consumer base?
HN: Yes, people are constantly connected. But I disagree that people are always “ready to spend.” On the contrary, open access to information has helped people ask the right questions and understand and articulate their own needs better. People will spend when they are ready to spend and after they are satisfied with their required level of information or indeed the overall experience they have had with a brand. The consumer has the power in today’s world and brands that fail to recognize this will be doing so to their own detriment. Today’s savvy customer base will interact with genuine brands that add value to their life and make their customer experience and product ownership seamless and rewarding.