The decisive impetus for consumer behavior change is smartphones and social media where an SMMPanel will help businesses thrive. People walk around at home and in the office, looking at their smartphones. Now, you don’t buy a product just because you saw an ad on TV, or just because you’ve had a past purchase. With the ease of objective information about quality becomes available, consumers are becoming less and less reliant on branding, customer loyalty, and positioning.

In an era when it was difficult to evaluate various technical characteristics and quality, certain brands were preferred. There was a time when Samsung unconditionally bought a product just because it was made. But with the ease with which the quality of a product can be evaluated on smartphones and social media, loyalty isn’t as impactful as it used to be. Brands will of course continue to be valuable in terms of awareness, persistence, attachment, and privilege, but their role in the quality assessment will be reduced.

Xiaomi, dubbed the ‘Continental Mistake’, is representative. Xiaomi has changed the perception of its cheap Chinese-made products. Nor did consumers prefer the Xiaomi brand, nor did they have customer loyalty. Ratings came out that it had a good quality for the price, i.e. the price, and Xiaomi products began to sell in flames, nicknamed the ‘Continental Mistake’. On social media such as Facebook and blogs, posts about Xiaomi came up every day. People who were curious got more information by searching, and they checked for reviews at Naver, Auction, and 11th Street. Consumers who quickly completed the quality assessment began to make purchases without hesitation.

With this growing number of digitally-armed consumers, so are the marketing efforts of companies. As people and people became connected, offline and online connected, machines and machines connected, data began to come together. This makes it possible to understand consumer behavior and buying patterns to drive more efficient marketing. Whether by consumers or businesses, the data left behind in the digital space is growing exponentially.

Data by itself can’t do anything, but being able to interpret and leverage it is a huge opportunity factor for businesses. Now, marketing technology is evolving into the scientific realm of convergence with artificial intelligence where computers themselves analyze consumer behavior and make marketing decisions.

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Amazon is representative. Amazon has become the world’s most powerful online commerce company based on its “personalized recommendation feature.” Since then, it has gone beyond online and is competing for on- and off-line distribution supremacy with Wal-Mart. Google, Apple, and IT are battling over the platform, and IBM, HP, and Microsoft are battling over the cloud server market. This is called “Amazonification” in the IT industry. It means that you are becoming ‘Amazonized’ regardless of your industry. In recent years, the company has been further gaining market dominance by introducing innovative technologies such as “Amazon Go” for brick-and-mortar stores without checkout counters, “Alexa” for artificial intelligence systems, and “unmanned delivery” using drones.

As digital transformation moves millions of consumers to smartphones and social media, more and more companies are using marketing technologies. An example is Amorepacific, which has grown into a door-to-door sale. Amorepacific is leading the new trend with the introduction of ‘Beauty Mirrors’ where you can demonstrate virtual makeup through the application without having to do the makeup yourself, ‘Nail Fit’ which uses laser printers to style nails of the design you want, and ‘Custom Cosmetics Service’ which customizes cosmetics to suit your skin and tastes.

In line with the trend of breaking down the boundaries of distribution channels, we have focused our efforts on omnichannel strategies, and leveraged technologies such as the Internet of Things to evolve brick-and-mortar stores into digitized spaces, enabling customers to have consistent, new experiences in stores, websites, and apps. The implication is that we are bringing technology into the field so that consumers can experience it for themselves, and we are making a difference.

In fact, the evolution of technology in marketing has never been as rapid as it is today. To put it more precisely, it would be correct to say that technology has never been at the center of marketing history. Companies that are only familiar with concepts such as branding, positioning, differentiation, and so on, will need to actively use technology in their marketing efforts in the future. Otherwise, you’ll have no choice but to stay tied to expensive television commercials.