THE TRUTH ISSUE@marketingmag
“It’s not just about
understanding how many
people have a smartphone,
a wearable or a smart
device in their homes.”
for culture. These three skills – language, sociality and
culture – are woven from the same fabric: conversation.
Technology further enables conversation. And while
today’s technology helps us converse, tomorrow’s
technology will in some cases have conversations for us.
About 74 percent of Australian 18- to 29-year-olds use
Facebook Messenger every week, 47 percent use Snapchat
and 25 percent use WhatsApp. Technology shapes how
people communicate not only with each other but also with
companies: 48 percent of Australian ‘Progressive Pioneers’
already use social networks or tools to connect with
representatives of their favourite brands at least weekly.COORDINATION: HOW WE GET
THINGS DONE
Humans are social animals: they take pride in earning the
respect of friends and they are unsettled when they are
not in harmony with their tribes, however defi ned. They
use emotionally motivated conversation to coordinate
mutually benefi cial tasks, including bartering for exchange.
Enabled by tools, people shop, manage their fi nances,
communicate and entertain themselves. About seven
out of 10 Australian online adults shop online regularly.
Computers are the go-to device for online shopping and
online banking, but 29 percent of Australian online adults
already prefer smartphones when purchasing physical
goods or paying bills. A high 82 percent of Australian
online adults have used an alternative payment method in
the past three months, mostly PayPal and BPAY.EMOTION: HOW WE KNOW WHAT
TO CARE ABOUT
Forrester has written a lot about the role of emotion in what
consumers do and how they interact with brands, how it
defi nes the customer experience and how it shapes their
brand preferences. Applied to technology, this means thathow people feel about technology shapes how they use it.
Emotion guides them toward technologies they feel they
can use and away from those they don’t yet feel equipped to
master – or that don’t yet add enough relevance to persuade
them to invest time and/or money in mastering them.Technology is getting better and better at helping us
meet our needs, and our emotional connection with
it is growing as well. We will build our consumer tech
stacks on these emotion-rich connections that guide us
to the devices, services and experiences that meet our
needs. Winning technologies will expand and exploit
these four human forces: mastery of tools, coordination,
conversation and emotion. And winning companies must
have the consumer understanding and corresponding
tech stack that can keep up with this unprecedented rise
in human capacity.Forrester is a Marketing content partner- a leading organisation with which we
collaborate to bring exclusive content
to readers. Read more from Forrester analysts at
marketingmag.com.au