Introduction

In the present world of disruptions, the rapid progress of the consumer technology is changing the human behavior more than ever before. Many pundits tend to stretch their imagination and predict the future digital world in the next 5 years which may perhaps take 15-20 years to get to that stage. So I need to be careful not to go overboard in predicting the future but analyze the current market trends, its impact on the customer behavior and where the market may be heading in the near future.

The Underrated Dilemma

We have always tried to figure out the expectations of the customers through corporate imposed surveys, promotional interviews and even Facebook posts, but do we realize the fact that in many cases the same customers are quite oblivious of the expectations until someone shows them the value proposition in adopting a new generation of product and/or services? In the ecosystem of fast paced evolution of technology, the customers are more confused than ever and perhaps even struggling to keep up with the current innovations. If you don't know the latest digital buzzwords, which are by the way changing every month, you don't belong to the clan. To be brutally honest, the customers are not really worried about the success factors of the large conglomerates (e.g. Banks, Retailers and Corporates) or even the start-ups who are bringing out the innovations. However, the customers do have the power to choose between the better and the best amongst the options presented to them. One fact that cannot be denied is that the customer is very much confused with the well packaged choices presented to them. Compounding the dilemma, the pace of technological advancement in the consumer products is creating lesser gestation period for the customers to choose and buy a product or service and continue with their preferred product or brand for many years, unlike the old Radio, Turn table players or Cathode Ray Televisions that lasted for more than a decade. Just to illustrate my point, let’s take the classic examples of smartphones. Since the emergence of smartphones few years back, the underlying technologies in the both the hardware and software level has been improving in leaps and bounds every year, making it hard for the customer to choose and stick to a version of smartphone for longer period and ignore the new and improved ones emerging every year.

Fanning the Dilemma

The smartphone manufacturers have almost perfected the art of Buyology, i.e. inducing the customer to buy the newer version of the same product over and over again. This trend is going to continue in the coming years and smartphone manufacturers are going to push for better experience and improved specifications with the anticipation that the customers will get influenced due to market advertisements and social pressure. The customer influence nowadays is also augmented by the reviews in the social media like that in YouTube where the digital natives love to "see and hear" the products in the first instance rather than go to the store and "touch and feel" them. The customers today are immensely empowered with almost unlimited volume of information available over the World Wide Web.

Disruption vs. Control

Analyzing my favorite subjects - the Retail Banking and the Payments are also undergoing slow and steady disruptions. It is true that the changes in regulations have a gestation period to generate the desired impact within the buyers and sellers’ market. Also the industry lobby is constantly pushing the regulators, perhaps in certain occasions against the wind of change, to avoid the loss of investments made against a particular strategy that has a long term impact to their investments. But the winds of change is usually not decided by regulators or the industry lobbyists, it is decided by the customer behavior influenced by new technology. That is why many of the start-ups are taking the leap of faith and trying to garner a targeted community of customers to experience the innovation and thus initiating disruptions in the market. Once the newly introduced trend gathers steam and more of the consumers gets attracted by the veracity of the new product, the bigger players makes a grand entry into the so far niche market through acquisitions of start-ups or through in-house developed competing products. In short, the innovation and disruption in today's world seems to be the normal phenomenon. The question is how to get the customers, who are already confused with the plethora of innovations, hooked onto the desired ones? Many of the industry analysts are engaged in that quest and spend a lot of their time in creating series of strategies to push the new products and services into the market and wait for the predicted results, hopeful that they will succeed in keeping up with what they have promised in the boardroom presentations in order to get the budget approval. Sometimes the prediction does not work, not because that concept is wrong, but because there are too many disrupters and competitors to sway the customers away from the launched product.

Living In the Dark Age

I am not trying to propose a utopian solution to this intricate man made dilemma, but trying to prove how difficult the word "choice" has become in today's world for a customer. Are we really lost in the dungeons of confusion and unpredicted nature of the market dynamics? Perhaps we are going through the era of the “Dark Age of Technology” as described by one of the top industry analyst. Is the digital innovation the beginning of the Renaissance of consumer product dominance, where all your beloved gadgets (your smart TVs, new generation cars, refrigerators, house alarms, PlayStations, smartphones etc.) communicate wirelessly and independently to provide better services to you? It is scary to imagine already how much control you have over the gadgets in the digital world or perhaps it is the other way around. Life today is much more chaotic and complicated than that of a common man going to work in the morning to earn his daily bread not so long ago, say 30 years earlier.

Conclusion: The Merger of Ages

The digital age has now virtually got merged with the information age where information of almost anything and everything is at your fingertips and available when and where you want through your smartphones connected with the internet. The instant tweets and social advocates from millions of connected users enable the customer of making a far better and informed decision with greater conviction than from similar situation 30 years ago. The question however is how much can we cope with the over-abundance of bits and bytes circling around us influencing our very own existence. And this is just the beginning.