The rise of the Super Shopper: she wants what she wants — now. Or else!

 Sixth SA CX Report reveals a key profile has emerged, but do they expect too much?

Women have traditionally been the most likely ones to shop, for everything from groceries to home décor and clothing. This means that she’s been the one in control of her own rands and possibly those of her family. And now there is such a proliferation of shopping channels to choose from — online retailers such as Takealot, thrifting shops such as yaga.co.za and traditional shopping malls — that shoppers have everything at their fingertips. Transactions can be superfast and require no banking details. The last-leg innovations introduced by e-tailers have given rise to the Super Shopper, a woman who no longer needs to step inside a retail store any more and is between 25 and 34 years old. Like it or not, the Super Shopper is a creation of the retail industry. 

Let’s call her Nobuhle. She’s up-and-coming, hasn’t incurred too much debt yet and has more disposable income than those who do have debt (think car/s or homes). Even in such tough economic times as these, and with the internet her oyster, she is shopping up a storm every hour of the day.

The unreasonable shopper

But she’s tricky, the product of a world during Covid when brands did everything they could to keep going, attending to consumers’ every whim, focusing hard on getting the purchasing journey right, having a strong empathy for their plight during the pandemic and basically doing what they could to keep the business running. Hotels were slashing room rates, grocers invested in last-mile delivery tech and clothing was delivered quickly to customers’ doors. And consumers got used to it. The intense focus on giving them never-to-be-repeated deals or making their online processes better led to the creation of the “unreasonable shopper”.

Today consumers want what they want — now. Not now-now or just now, but now. They’re living in an instant gratification world where everything has sped up, so their expectations of brands that they order from online is the same.

However, while brands have succeeded in speeding up their delivery, they have not kept pace with consumer expectations and, as our research in the “2024 South African Customer Experience Report” (the SACX report) shows, there is a disconnect in terms of expectations regarding how long it takes to get assistance: consider that 28% of consumers expect to be attended to immediately, vs just 7% of businesses, or that they want this within an hour (17% of consumers vs 19% of businesses). Any way you look at it, consumers expect faster service than they are getting.

Above all, always be reliable

Consumers have little leeway or patience for brand fails. What came through as the number one insight in this year’s report was the requirement of reliability. Not price (63%), not delivery (60%) or even trust (54%)’ — just reliability (71%). That’s telling. Reliability is relates to the whole package. It’s about delivering what brands say on the box. It’s about ensuring customers get their goods in good time, that the goods are of great quality, straight from the oven, packaged nicely — and can be returned hassle-free. There is no room here for any errors. When there are — and there surely will be, as brands are under great pressure to meet consumers’ increased demands — their misdemeanours will spread across social media like lightning bolts and become dinner table conversation.

So empowered have consumers become that it’s a case of the tail wagging the dog. The Super Shopper has no time for blunders. Most likely female, she is time-poor, stressed, must care for her family, most likely has a job and still needs to keep everything shipshape. Brands make a mistake at their peril — and if they do, need to make up for it immediately, or risk being cancelled.

The truth counts

Reviews and testimonials have become particularly important for brands. Truth is getting harder to find, and this will only get worse as AI becomes more mainstream. Brands need to share lots of proof points via trusted third parties that they are legitimate and will deliver on their promises, at the right price; and they need to ensure added value.

Reviews reign supreme. Authentic experiences shared by other customers on company websites, social media, in search engine searches and on customer review sites like HelloPeter are powerful. Reviews have become progressively more important as the years have gone by — certainly since we launched the annual SACX report in 2019. Reviews  on company websites used to account for only 54% of where consumers found third-party information on the brand’s experience, but today they make up 66%. The influence of social media has also increased. In 2021, 55% of consumers used social media to research and review products. This has grown to 64%, and will likely keep increasing.

Brands need to up their game. Even while they deserve a round of applause for fixing customer experience issues like cart abandonment or poor navigation or delivery, everyone else did it too, and now brand A looks a lot like brand B in its category, or even sometimes across categories. To stand out brands need to go not only the extra mile, but also the extra extra mile to give their customers what they want, now.

Much like what Mary Shelley described in her 1800s book, Frankenstein, in which protagonist Victor Frankenstein creates a sentient being that comes to life and wants to be part of society to indulge in evil, becoming the monster that people had long feared — so too have brands created the Super Shopper. She will continue to grow stronger, better, more. She is powerful, resourceful, has tools at her fingertips, has little empathy, wants what she wants now, at a price she is willing to pay, and is digitally empowered with access to a proliferation of shopping options — a far cry from the shopper of the days when one just popped down to the stores.

As she gets stronger, brands need to do more, faster, and to offer even greater value. It’s tough during economic times like these, when both consumers and brands are time- and cash-poor, but the latter must cater for the former or risk going out of business. It’s a catch-22 situation: brands should not undervalue their goods too much as that then becomes the norm, but if they don’t, they are at risk of being overlooked. Millions of shoppers have apps on their phones, including Sixty60, Takealot, Amazon, Yaga and Showmax, among others. They flip between one and the other in no time at all, comparing products and prices without any effort. Frankenstein is on the loose.

At the end of the day, brands have no choice but to learn how to engage the Super Shopper. While not representative of everyone who shops online yet, others will be sure to follow. The next generation of consumers is coming to power — the purchasing power of Gen Alpha (under-14-year-olds) for instance, is incredible, because, though they are not necessarily doing the buying, they have a strong influence on what their parents buy. Brands will therefore soon need to contend with an even more empowered shopper. Rest at your own risk.

Amanda Reekie is the founder of ovatoyou, an HTML and app-based research tool with an associated panel of more than 35,000 online South Africans. She is co-author of the 2024 South African Customer Experience Report, together with Rogerwilco CEO Charlie Stewart and Julia Ahlfeldt from Julia Ahlfeldt CX Consulting.

The big take-out: Brands have no choice but to learn how to engage the Super Shopper.