Consumer Communication Deployment Tactics: An Integrated Framework for Lifestyle Brands and Retailers in India (CCF-LS)

Abstract

Though consumer communication and orientation is a collective responsibility of all the departments/functions across the organization, a majority of lifestyle brands and retailers in India believe that the consumer communication is the deliverable of a single department/function that is widely and erroneously tagged as Marketing Department. This belief is distracting them from understanding the long-term positive impact on consumer patronage and they continue to use high-cost advertisements as one of the major tactics for consumer communication. A single theory, model and framework of consumer behavior from the existing literature available across perspectives, paradigms, and areas of study (Economics, Behavioral Economics, Psychology, Social Psychology, Anthropology, Marketing and so on) is not entirely applicable that could be adopted to suit lifestyle brands/retailers in India and designing a framework without empirical pieces of evidence is also not appropriate. In this study, (i) we have studied over 28 consumer behavior theories, models and frameworks; (ii) analyzed 24 months’ of actual data of a few select organized lifestyle brands and retailers in India; (iii) borrowed experimental findings and insights from previous studies relevant in this context, to identify 50 factors influencing the outcomes of each stage of the consumer decision-making process and selected a few of them that have indicated the high scope of influencing capability by a lifestyle brand/retailer to design an economical and effective framework that is useful in designing consumer communication deployment tactics by a lifestyle brand or retailer in India. The framework is named as CCF-LS.