Ahead of the weekend, MMW learned that a new digital consumer satisfaction index is poised to offer an innovative global tool to understand how consumers make connections with a brand leading up to their final decision to either engage and purchase something or go elsewhere.
This Digital Satisfaction Index (DSI) originated in the Intent Lab, a new research partnership announced between Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications and Performics Worldwide.
Through the partnership, Northwestern and Performics will conduct original research studies tied to major brands to help those brands better understand their consumers’ online behavior.
To construct the DSI, Northwestern and Performics “conducted in-person consumer interviews, surveys with probabilistic and non-probabilistic samples of more than 3,000 participants in the U.S. and the U.K. throughout Spring of 2016, and identified the four key factors of consumer satisfaction: trust, utility, social and privacy.”
Among the findings:
- Privacy is a significant concern for Americans, but less so for online consumers in the U.K.
- Digital satisfaction is highest among baby boomers; lowest among youngest and oldest demographics
- The financial services industry scored the highest in digital satisfaction; Household goods scored the lowest
“Technology empowers both consumers and brands to make digital brand connections, but consumers are flooded with messages and interactions that can be simultaneously intrusive, annoying, enabling and empowering,” said Frank Mulhern, associate dean, department chair and professor of Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications program. “Through this partnership, we aim to uncover how those connections are perceived, and the thought patterns that take place leading up to that final decision to engage with or abandon a brand.”
