The Convergence Conversation

Groups & Committees

The converged consumer - confused or confident?

Understanding the consumer reaction to convergence is probably one of the biggest challenges facing industry strategists today. Beyond the hype of product announcements and M&A deals it is still unclear how far consumer behaviours are likely to change or how quickly. While the media drools over the youth market and its insatiable appetite to interact, policy makers worry that large swathes of the population are being left behind entirely. So what are we dealing with here? Are confident consumers in control and leading the way or are we leaving confused consumers behind?

As a starting point conversationalists wondered whether there was fundamental point to tackle.  Does the term ‘consumer’ make sense anymore if we consider the types of behaviours that are now becoming commonplace? Does a MySpacer really consume anything? Or are they users and producers? Does the traditional commercial relationship where industry gives and consumers take (and pay) no longer exist? Interactive technology and easy access to a vast range of media sources means that media is no longer a scarce commodity and that the industry seems to be losing its power in the relationship.

But if the ‘people’ have the power, do they know what to do with it? Much has been written over the last twelve months about the youth generation, for whom ‘online is the lead medium and convergence is instinctive’ as Ofcom observed in its latest Communications Market report. This group easily fits into the ‘confident’ mould and undoubtedly represents the future, although, as previous conversations have pointed out, this generation is often neither willing nor able to pay for content and services at present. So what about the rest of us?

One segment of society that was discussed was the over 50s, whom as one conversationalist pointed out, we patronise at our peril. True, this group may not have engaged in converged services as much as their children and grandchildren have done thus far, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want to engage. Services may not have been marketed to them in the right way, with the life-enhancing qualities of a service emphasised instead of its gadgetry. Devices may not have been designed in a manner that best suits them – shrinking devices, for example, do not encourage those with visual or physical impairment to take-services.

And there is a bigger point to make about understanding what a ‘consumer’ actually wants and needs. One participant told a story of how a multi-channel interactive television was installed in an old people’s home, with the expectation that its residents would enjoy interaction with the outside world, only to be surprised when the most popular channel was the CCTV channel showing the home’s reception area, allowing them to see who was coming and going on their door-step. If industry is really to widen its customer base beyond the youth market it needs to understand how its technology can add value to different lives in different ways.

Another factor that may be stopping a large percentage of the population being at ease with converged technology is a lack of after sales support. As one conversationalist pointed out, ‘we don’t plumb our own homes’, we get a plumber in, so why should it be any different with broadband access. Even the most technology-savvy amongst us will admit that setting up a wireless LAN, let alone a fully networked home, is a tricky business. Being confident with convergence shouldn’t require a degree in wiring and so the industry needs to realise that it is not enough to sell, it also needs to support.

Early in September, DSG International, the parent company of Dixons and Curry’s, went some way to addressing this problem, announcing that it would be launching TechGuys, a service offering homes and small businesses round-the-clock help and on-the-road engineers. However, the conversationalists agreed, this level of support really needs to be stepped up across the board if we are to avoid convergence being associated with a frustrating customer experience.

Other consumers are frustrated with convergence because they fall the wrong side of another digital divide – the rural/urban split – and live in one of the UK’s remaining broadband ‘not-spots’ The lengths to which some communities have gone to build their own broadband services is testament, however, to an inherent high demand for these services. With many of the so-called ‘confused’ consumers then, there seems to be a latent desire to engage with convergence, if only it was presented in an easy way that actually improves lives.

But while turning the interested and confused (or frustrated) into fully paying confident consumers is clearly in the commercial interests of industry, there are also public policy motivations. In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, the UK needs a society in which everyone is able to take part in convergence – whatever their economic, social or cultural background – and in which the UK's creative and knowledge economies are able to draw upon the widest possible bank of consumers, creators and producers. Industry is already working to deliver this, through bodies such as the Media Literacy Task Force.

MTLF is an informal group of stakeholders endorsed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in 2004 which exists to help bring strategic cohesion to the development of media literacy in the UK – giving everyone the choice to communicate, create and participate fully in today's fast-moving converged world. Media literacy is also floated as one solution to the challenge that regulators face in a future where, with a proliferation of media, the state will be less and less able to oversee our interaction with it.

The need to take everyone along with the tide of convergence becomes stark when you consider that it is not just entertainment but public services that will increasingly be delivered with new technology. Another group in the UK who could fall into the  ‘disengaged’ category are lower socio-economic groups, who have been slower to adopt broadband-enabled services. Again, as in the commercial world, the solution is likely to lie in delivering services in a format that is easy and which slots into people’s existing behavioural patterns.

The truth is that consumers, or whatever we are going to call them, are neither confused nor confident. For the most part they are willing and able to engage with convergence if it is delivered in a way that easily allows them to enhance their own lives. The industry may have gone after the ‘easy’ customers first, those who because of youth or technical enthusiasm are leading the way, but in order to really capitalise on convergence it might be time to pay more attention to those rich pickings further up the tree – that difficult 24- 94 age bracket!

Wikipedia definition of user generated content more»