Digital Marketing

Perfect information, for you non-Econ majors, is a state in which prices and quality of products are assumed to be known to all consumers and producers.

Back in ancient times, when I studied economics, it was considered a theoretical construct than a real-life scenario.  The closest example, pre-internet, was the airline industry, in which travel agents could compare all fares on one system.  The success stories of near-perfect competition in air travel differentiated themselves via service (Jet Blue) or efficiency (Southwest).

Enter the mobile internet, and perfect information becomes reality.  As Rimma Kats states in a recent Mobile Commerce Daily column, Mobile Enabled Price Transparency is a Challenge for Retailers, “The study found that many retailers are in panic mode and do not know how to handle the emergence of these price comparison services.”

How do you distinguish your brand in the age of perfect information?  One way is to stand for something – dare I say it – noble.  Show that some portion of your profits is contributing to a worthwhile cause and give consumers a reason to choose to shop with you even though they can save $5 across town or online.

I’ve touted these stats before, but they bear repeating:

• Nearly 8 in 10 consumers say they would switch to another brand if it was associated with a good cause.(1)
• 88% of millennials said they would switch to brands supporting causes. (2)
• More than half of American moms say they would pay more to for a brand that supports a cause. (2)

Of course we’re always more interested in what consumers do than what they say they’ll do.  So please visit the Cause Marketing Forum and review the many case studies of companies that increased sales and market share by affiliating themselves with a charitable cause. 

Note that many of these case studies are from pre-social media days.  Facebook Causes alone enjoys 16 million visitors each month, who are sharing causes they care about with their network.  Wouldn’t you like them to be talking about your brand -- particularly as we move toward the age of perfect information?

When corporations team up with consumers to help charities, everybody wins.

1 Duke University and Cone survey, reported by eMarketer
2 PR Week and Barkley Public Relations survey, reported by eMarketer