Monthly Archives: October 2017

the online consumer’s hierarchy of needs

Deliveroo – This is a food delivery website that offers delivery from restaurants that would not normally offer delivery, including fast food and Café’s.

There are 3 consumer needs identified by researchers when looking at the online consumer’s hierarchy of needs. These needs are the structural firmness of the site (security), functional convenience, and representational delight

The layout of the website is consistent throughout with a calm and welcoming user interface and colour scheme. This fits the need of the functional convenience since the website is easy to navigate. By having easy to use and relevant characteristics on the website such as ‘my account’ and ‘checkout’ the consumer will always be informed with regards to where they are in the process of actually completing an order. With large text, this is clear and easy to access making the process of ordering the food as simple and trouble-free as possible.

By having a consistent colour scheme and simple layout an atmosphere is created. This is an atmosphere that shows that the website is calm and in a no pressure situation. Deliveroo has also created this effect by adding pleasant photos of all the food provided by each restaurant on the home page of the website.

The most basic need for a website consumer is the structural firmness of the site. This need reflects that the consumer needs the website being used to be safe and secure. With the rise in online fraud and the always prevalent risk of fraud, Deliveroo must ensure all payments are made securely. This need also represents things such as response time of the website. Deliveroo has heavily invested into servers to ensure that large amounts of traffic can be accommodated too and will prevent the website from crashing when used by a large number of users.

This experience could be enhanced by having sounds and or videos on the website giving more information about the selected restaurant or meal. This has been proven to increase the user experience since the consumer will feel more informed and have more senses stimulated, therefore becoming more engaged with the website.

Another improvement would be the implementation of a side-bar/cuisine categories. If there was a side-bar to select different types of food then it would become even easier for the user to find a specific food type that they are looking for. This also could be furthered by improving the search system to allow for food searches instead of just restaurant searches. These improvements would improve the consumer experience by improving the actual functional convenience of the website.

Context

IKEA is a multinational business which designs and manufactures ready to assemble furniture. IKEA employees around 160,000 people with 365 stores in 45 different countries. IKEA decided to implement the socializers to help IKEA with receiving information from customers and passing it on to the relevant departments. It was decided that a listening hub would be created as a physical space in the IKEA headquarters to create this information channel.

How IKEA will become a socially intelligent business.

• The listening hub will help IKEA to become both socially intelligent and socially aware.
• By using social media platforms and creating a listening hub IKEA will be able to receive feedback from different regions and pass this feedback/information on to the relevant department.
• This listening hub will also allow IKEA to pin point specific social media platforms for different regions since recent information portrayed that the UK used sites like YELP to give feedback whilst the U.S used Facebook to give feedback.
• By creating a customizable platform for customers to engage with IKEA, customers would receive a unique experience that allowed them to get their own personal point across whether its positive or negative.
• One obstacle for IKEA is that the business has already had enormous success through using traditional business methods and therefore there could be a resistance to change in some departments whilst it is working smoothly in a different department.

Summary

IKEA may face some implementation problems since there are a very large number of departments across many regions that will need to implement this change. But a cultural shift within the business will allow a more adaptive attitude towards both the listening hub and the use of social media to engage with customers. Since the platform is so highly customisable, IKEA and the socializers will be able to create a perfect balance that suits both IKEA and the customers. Since this information is so vital to IKEA the listening hub acts as a stable channel that will ensure relevant information is passed from the customers to IKEA and then to the relevant specific department that can take the feedback and act upon it.

Ikea case study: https://studentcentral.brighton.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-3029519-dt-content-rid-5621925_1/xid-5621925_1

IKEA & The Socializers: Building Social into the Heart of a Global Business

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