Flexibility will be key to securing purchases in 2021

If 2020 taught us anything, it was to be flexible. Going into 2021, according to a new report, flexibility and zero-commitment offers are increasingly important to conversion.

The study

Zenith UK’s The View 2021, an annual report, points out that sectors traditionally averse to low-cost flexibility – like travel and automotive – now consider it table stakes. Helping your customers to save money when they need it will matter far more than a ‘we’re here for you’ email.

Background

• With the memory of a cancelled Christmas (and a cancelled Eid before that), Britons are used to having the rug pulled from beneath them – now they want the brands they use to recognise and make accommodations for our constant state of uncertainty.
• Per Foresight Factory data, 78% of people expect to be able to cancel a service at any time without incurring fees.
• COVID-19 came along at a time when consumers were becoming more comfortable with paying for access to services instead for paying as if it were a one-off product. That flexibility was as much a result of people’s need to access services as the need to cut them from their budgets in an emergency.

Key quote

“We are labelling 2021 the year of flexibility”, explains Leonie Galliford, Head of Insight at Zenith UK. “Behaviours are very likely to at least in part revert back to what we’ve seen before for consumers pre-pandemic – but in a much more flexible way … we’ll see some people picking up their lives where they left off, and some starting afresh.”

Sourced from Zenith UK