PUMA’s Forever Faster Sprint to Build Customer Loyalty in SEA

Engaging Regular Customers Is more Cost-Efficient than Acquiring New Ones.

The current economic climate and the pandemic have definitely transformed the way consumers make shopping decisions and actually purchase products. 

Prior to this, ecommerce was a space mostly for risk-takers who were ready for the uncertainty of either being blown away or disappointed by their online purchase, multi-step site registration and payment processes, and impersonal marketing communications, amongst others. Then, many preferred the experience of physically stepping into stores to buy what they needed.

But as the lockdowns were implemented, the wheels of ecommerce started to turn faster. Two years later, we emerge from the isolation to a world of retail that has greatly changed and continues to do so for the better.

In a podcast with Retail Asia, Santosh Reddy, Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Singapore-based Capillary Technologies, a loyalty, customer engagement & ecommerce solutions provider, notes that one of the changes that occurred is a consumer market that is “increasingly looking for newness in personalised experiences, whether in terms of the content they consume from a brand or the messaging the brand offers.”

In this age of social media connections, consumers expect brands to engage with them in real-time whilst they are interacting with the brand or whilst making a transaction.

Casualization vs Premiumisation

In terms of fashion choices, two retail developments have emerged as a result of hybrid work: casualisation and premiumisation. “As consumers stay at home, there's a lot more focus on casual wear. But when they get to the stores, they're looking for premium experiences.”

Echoing this sentiment, Ankit Madhogaria, Head of Ecommerce for Southeast Asia at leading athletics brand Puma, adds that “there are people who prefer to touch and feel the product, who go to the stores, try the product, then make a decision. Then there are others who care about the value for money, to get the best product at the best price.”

It is this diversity that Puma aims to leverage, using Capillary’s tool that enables brands to capture consumer behaviour and act on it.

“All these personas exist simultaneously all the time. It is important that we are aware of the strengths and the segments that exist and figure out a mechanism to talk to them in a way they would want to respond to or find more appealing.”

Puma and Capillary have been working together since 2016, starting with India and extending to Singapore and Malaysia, Reddy relates. “Puma is always exploring newer channels, newer ways to engage with their consumers. At Capillary, that's inspired us to come up with more innovative solutions,” he added.

Strengthening Customer Engagement and Retention

“We constantly strive to be more relevant to the customers,” said Madhogaria. This entails having a sense of the right channel, the right message, and the right time is something that constantly evolves.

"Consumers want to engage with the brand that speaks their language,” he added. “Some prefer to be by email, others prefer social ads. In a few cases, SMS is quite personal for some consumers.”

With the help of Capillary’s loyalty & ecommerce solutions, Puma in the SEA region can track the clickstream data to uncover the engagement rate of individual shoppers, purchase preferences, and behaviour based on the communication platform and the message—down to the traits of the product, the calendar, the shopping entry point—build hypotheses off that data and “create more communications for them which they act upon,” says Madhogaria.

He adds that the solution enables them to further break it down into different cohorts of customers and incorporate such information into the marketing campaign process. 

Reddy believes that looking at the clickstream data is a vital component of ecommerce to grow customer retention. “Brands need to look increasingly at what happens in between transactions for consumers, because that's where loyalty is built. Consumers are willing to share a lot more data but how brands leverage that becomes a big differentiator.”

Engagement becomes even more important when the cohort of regular consumers refer friends with similar shopping patterns. Keeping them engaged and pushing them to be advocates is even more important, Reddy explained, adding that brands such as Puma have recognised this from a cost-efficiency viewpoint. “Engaging a customer that is already part of their database is much less expensive than trying to acquire a new customer.”

Solutions of today can drill down to the most minute data to meet specific and ever-changing customer preferences. “You have increasingly a set of consumers who are very conscious about their environmental impact. So we're starting to see brands talk about some of their ESG initiatives. It comes down to having a really good technology stack which allows you to uncover these preferences,” said Reddy.

“You almost look at technology as an enabler to feed in these inputs which brands can use to keep evolving this engagement strategy.”