The advent of Covid, the lock downs, the unlock downs has turned our lives almost upside down. Changes have permeated into how we live, how we take care of ourselves, how we work and do business and various other facets of our lives.
Feedback Insights carried out a study and has set out the 75 Key Consumer Behaviour Trends in this report.
Chandramouli has over 20 years of experience in research-based consulting engagements in the B2B and B2B2C market spaces. He has positively impacted over 400 organisations through his work, by helping them build effective stakeholder engagements, identifying their votaries, and building a growth strategy aligned to customer expectations and business priorities.
He has been the chief architect of Feedback Insight’s growth into a leading research and consulting firm in the B2B space for all ‘active stakeholders and market listening’. He has helped develop Feedback Insights into a firm that has become the ‘Go to Place’ for all critical insights related to the stakeholder ecosystem. This includes Customers, Employees, Brands, Investors, Partners, Vendors etc.
In an earlier role, he has led B2B market sizing, go-to-market plans, partner identification engagements etc and has streamlined and built processes and systems relevant to B2B Market Research. He has rich domain experience
across various business sectors such as IT/BPM, professional services, knowledge services, the start-up space, financial markets, chemicals, rural markets, electrical & electronics, oil and gas, infrastructure, engineering, healthcare, retail etc.
He has worked with leading Tech services organisations in India and globally and has a keen understanding of the market, customer pulse and challenges faced by this sector. EXTM, Experience Index, a framework to assess and track customer experience, has been conceptualised by him and has become the most tracked bench mark amongst tech services leaders in India today.
He is a music aficionado, a violin player par excellence and an avid follower of Carnatic music. He has conducted violin recitals for various radio stations including All India Radio Pondicherry, Chennai and Thrissur.
Chandramouli has been a regular speaker in various industry forums and associations such as SPIN, NASSCOM, IMTMA, etc. He believes in mentoring the next generation of MBA graduates and conducts guest lectures on B2B market re search at IIM Bangalore, XIME, IFIM, Symbiosis.
Saroj has over 30 years of industry experience in Finance, Corporate planning, Research and Consulting. She has been associated with Feedback Consulting for over 25 years in various capacities, including being the CEO until March 2011.
Saroj has been instrumental in the growth of the brand “Feedback”. She has overseen our engagements across various business sectors including IT, Education, Engineering, Banking, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail, and Construction. She is instrumental in defining our culture and methodologies and is constantly helping us refine these in an evolving business landscape, to enable us to drive value for our customers.
In her present role as the Chief Mentor, she is helping us continuously improve our processes to create a “360 degree Stakeholder Centric” organization.
Saroj conducts guest lectures at various management institutes in the area of B2B research, Stakeholder Experience Management and Retention. Though a Science graduate with an MBA from IIM Bangalore, her interests are rooted in history. She enjoys travelling across the country and abroad, primarily to historical places. She is actively involved in various social causes to help the underprivileged, especially children and senior citizens.
Ravichandar is Non-Executive Chairman, Feedback Consulting and Honorary Director, Bangalore International Centre. He is also the Honorary Consul, Republic of Slovenia in Bengaluru.
Ravichandar was a key member of the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) during 2000-04.
Ravichandar along with three others was involved in making the case for Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JN-NURM). Since 2006 he has been evangelizing the idea of City Connect involving business, civil society and government. He was part of the 3-member Government Expert Committee tasked with reimaging governance and administration for Bengaluru. He was Co-Chair of
the Karnataka Tourism Vision Group.
Ravichandar is part of multiple other social and cultural initiatives – Bangalore Literature Festival; Education for the underprivileged through Samhita Academy, Akshara Foundation, Teach for India; Takshashila Institution; Citizen Matters; Attakkalari, etc.
Ravichandar has a Mechanical Engineering degree from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Avid golfer, A cricketer by passion and a talent spotter in the game, Shankar is also a business and strategy consultant. With over 30 years’ experience, Shankar has served a wide spectrum of industries an clients both in India and around the world.
An engineer from Bangalore University, Shankar’s expertise is in assessing market opportunities & advising clients on investment ecosystems to deliver successful business results. Shankar has played a pivotal role in establishing many businesses in India and globally. He has forged numerous partnerships between Indian and International companies. Shankar has worked across diverse industry sectors – both old & new and brings a strong strategic perspective to clients. His contributions have helped establish many large investments in India that have created significant economic impact for the country and in the process created innumerable number of jobs.
A successful investor, Shankar has served on the boards of listed companies. He is also a passionate public speaker and writer on diverse topics. In his spare time, he teaches in management schools and enjoys mentoring students.
A world traveler, he lives in Mumbai with his wife and best friend Sushma
Rajagopalan joined our company in 2006 and since then has been instrumental in building Feedback Insights.
As AVP, Raj is responsible for the strategic direction and growth of our organization, with a dual responsibility of heading business development and leading a business unit focussed on customer listening. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Raj has positively impacted over 200+ firms and has played an active role in expanding our footprints into newer territories, sectors, and clients. He has been particularly successful in establishing our manufacturing vertical.
Raj holds an executive programme degree from IIM Bangalore and is an avid quizzer in his free time. When he’s not working, you can find him cooking, exploring local places, discussing movies and music.
Chandu heads the delivery for our Technology vertical, which engages with 70+ clients to enhance their CX programs. He has extensive experience in designing Customer Satisfaction Studies, Thought leadership surveys, End user experience surveys & Brand perception studies.
Jomesh has over 17 years of experience in Research, Consulting and Sales & Marketing. He plays a dual role of Business Acquisition/ Retention and Business Delivery in the organization. He has to his credentials many consulting engagements across all the sectors of the economy (Manufacturing, Agriculture, Mining, Construction & Services)
He has been with Feedback Insights since 2007. He specializes in advising global & Indian companies for cross border business expansion, strategizing market entry and implementing strategies for Customer retention. He has been instrumental in conducting retention engagements amongst both internal and external customers / stakeholders.
Jomesh has helped many Business organizations in assessing Brand Health audits/ Brand track, Brand identity and Brand Positioning across select industries. He has championed many “Needs & Expectations” exercises among stakeholders across industries using deep diving techniques like Customer Journey Maps (CJM). He has fuelled many new product development exercises in Construction material, Consumer Durable and Farm equipment sector, helping organizations to understand consumer behaviour in order to create appropriate offerings.
Jomesh is a Post Graduate in Marketing and a Bachelors in Engineering from University of Pune
Ganesh leads our Employee & Advisory practice at Feedback Insights. Over his 16 years of experience in the industry, He has delivered 100+ engagements in Consulting, Service Delivery Transformation and employee experience & branding
Ganesh has advised CXOs & decision-makers across the globe via compelling research & insights, trend spotting, consensus building and implementation programs in technology, manufacturing and new-age companies across the globe.
The approach taken is not prescriptive but rather looks at the principles of stakeholder centricity and the first principles to research to drive change for our clients.
Ganesh is a Post graduate in Management (Marketing) from TAPMI, Manipal and Bachelor in Engineering from Mumbai University.
In his free time, you will probably find Ganesh discussing business trends or movie trivia. Ganesh is based out of Bangalore
Kaarthik is heading our Delivery Unit focusing on manufacturing sectors and is based out of our Chennai office. His core competencies include Customer and Channel Partner Engagement Studies, Supplier/Vendor Engagement Studies and Customer Journey Mapping studies.
He has 17+ years of experience specializing in research engagements in the B2B manufacturing sector and he and his team have carried out 750+ diverse engagements which span across segments of Capital Equipment, Construction Equipment, Automobile, and General Engineering along with Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Metals.
In his earlier role, he has experience in carrying out market assessments, and opportunity assessments for manufacturing clients and brings these learnings to the fore of not looking only at indices but more importantly from an Outside In prism of evaluating business impact after considering the entire ecosystem (competitors, partners etc).
Kaarthik is a Mechanical Engineer from Madras University, Chennai and has done an Executive Development Program in Project Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur. Outside work, he is a nature lover who enjoys outdoor activities like trekking, kayaking and snorkelling. He also loves playing team sports like cricket which requires strategic thinking, tactical nuance, understanding team dynamics, building character, resilience, mutual respect, compassion and character.
Sanyogita comes with 25+ years of experience in Key Account Management and business development.
She has 16+ years experience in the IT services & office imaging equipment sector and 10 years in managing Customer & Stakeholder Engagement Measurement.
Her strengths include new business development, and she has led teams of telesales executives for supporting the Direct and Indirect channel with opportunities for new business.
She has specialised in Textile Designing from Sophia’s and Business Management from Welinkars Mumbai. She loves to do abstract paintings, especially Gondh and Mandala Art as well as Aluminium foil Ganesha paintings.
Sampath has more than two decades of experience in the converging world of business consulting and digital technology. He has partnered with large enterprises and helped plan, design and execute complex transformation programs.
He has also led a plethora of strategic initiatives as a management consultant which involved venture incubation, new market strategies and data transformation for large organizations.
His experience includes managing relationships with multiple fortune 500 and ‘born digital’ organizations leveraging his key strengths and experience in customer experience transformation, agile delivery and enterprise automation.
In a career spanning multiple decades with Cognizant, he has led with an entrepreneurial spirit and amassed vast experience in managing a region as a SBU head apart from innovation and data transformation programs. Sampath’s skills lie in understanding business complexities, market dynamics and connecting the dots to uncover opportunities that support business successes.
Sampath’s other interests are cricket (university level), traveling and reading (nonfiction only).
Nirmalya has worked as a Change Leader in the Technology business. In a career spanning twenty-four years, he has architected high-performance systems, led large transformation programs, executed effective sales strategies, and simplified business processes. He brings in deep experience in both the sales and quality management side of the business in large IT organizations.
His experience includes leading large enterprise-wide ‘Client Experience’ and Business Excellence Programs across business units that have a multi-billion-dollar footprint. His expertise lies in connecting the dots between Customer Experience, Business Excellence, Sales Effectiveness, and Change Management.
His areas of interest are in Design & Management of Satisfaction Improvement Program; Cross-Functional Process Improvement; Design and Deployment of Sales Cadence, Account Management, Pipeline Management; Sales Analytics & Design of Measurement Systems; Business Excellence Assessment; End-to-end Process Management.
Nirmalya holds a Postgraduate degree in Management from the University of Calcutta and a Bachelor of Engineering from NIT, Rourkela. He is a trained CFPM facilitator from Motorola University and a certified assessor on CII Business Excellence Model.
Nirmalya is an avid reader with a special interest in travelogues. He follows current affairs, emerging technologies and business models. More recently, he has added running to his repertoire.
Alton leads sales for the India – South region. He helps clients with building solutions on stakeholder experience measurement and brand assessment studies.
Usually the first point of contact to discuss research brief, he brings his cross-industry & research experience to build the right solution for clients by working collaboratively with them to address desired research & business outcomes
Prior to joining Feedback, Alton worked for over a decade in Sales and Delivery roles in the IT industry helping clients across verticals streamlining their IT processes and helping them implement process improvement initiatives.
Alton is an Electrical & Electronics engineer and a MBA from Goa Institute of Management. A nature and travel buff, he loves birding, entomology, photography and travelling to quaint destinations. He hails from Goa and is our go to person at office for all our travel and food queries around Goa.
Srividya Viswanathan comes with 23+ years of experience gleaned through her 14 + years’ work in the Information Technology industry and 9 years of semi entrepreneurial journey including setting up her social enterprise and a SME focused recruitment platform.
Her skills include research, business consulting, and customer experience management. Her experience covers business planning, business development, pre sales, delivery and capability development. Srividya has worked in leading IT firms like Accenture, Tata Infotech/TCS and for leading organisations providing customer and employee-oriented consulting.
Srividya is a post graduate IIM Bangalore and a commerce graduate from Nizams College, Hyderabad
Employee Engagement research aims to better understand employee experience and help employers improve retention. Key experience metrics are measured for accurate insights that enable actionable outcomes. The insights gleaned can aid the firm to take the right steps to build a thriving culture, where employees are engaged and productive.
Our approach leverages the EX-Index framework.
Chandrakant, CK as he is popularly known as is a career feedbacker, One of the earliest members of the organisation, he has been instrumental in building the Data Operations team from scratch. In the last 17 years in the organisation, he has built a robust data operations division. He has brought in rigour, quality consciousness and modernisation via technology and multi-modal access to respondents.
He is Chemical Engineer by education, from the Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, Bangalore.
When he is not managing complex data operations, CK loves to travel, trek and explore new places
Research executive with over 15 years of demonstrated track record of delivering high impact market research projects at scale. Her experience spans multiple countries and domains including B2B and B2C. She has strong business acumen and brings a unique blend of research knowledge and understanding of how it impacts business results. Her subject matter expertise in designing research methodology tailored to business needs lays the foundation for incisive research and deep customer insights.
Equally passionate about talent development, she enjoys mentoring young researchers to develop them to their fullest potential. Her keen eye for detail, problem solving skills and proven project management capabilities help deliver high quality output consistently across multiple projects.
She has a Bachelors degree in Mathematics and an MBA, and is a certified English language teacher for adults. She is an ardent music lover, avid movie watcher, and a huge sports fan who loves traveling.
Over 35 years’ experience in Consumer Behaviour, Advertising and Strategy
Specialist in Customer Experience, Design Research and Innovation Adoption and Usage ( notably in Digital Technologies, Media and Services)
Experience includes Ipsos Research (President, 2008 – ‘10; Consultant Data Science 2010 –’15), Indica Research ( 1994 – ’07 ; One of the founders ; the company was acquired by Ipsos in 2007), Contract Advertising ( 1989-’93; Director, Strategic Planning)
Senior Advisor, Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bangalore, responsible for Behaviour Change Strategy, at the Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Project [ A Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grantee ] … 2016 – Present
Founder, Myth + Math, an IP and Innovation Lab at Pondicherry, focused on the ecosystems to support the mentally disabled, both children and adults…. 2015 – Present
Board Member, TARA [ Technology and Action for Rural Advancement ] New Delhi, 2014 –present; Satya Special School, Pondicherry , 2016 – present.
B.E. with Hons., R.E.C. ( now N.I.T) Trichy, Madras University, 1978 | M. B. A, Faculty of Management Studies ( FMS) , Delhi University, 1980
We connect with employees in the notice period and former employees in the last 2 quarters.
We use metrics to track key elements that impact employee programs, policies, and initiatives.
We identify potential within strategic and key accounts and help our clients overcome challenges to enhance customer loyalty. The actionable outcomes boost business performance with sharp insights.
The approach is designed to bring in focus on the key accounts to improve engagement
Process redesign is focused on finetuning process to enhance stakeholder experience based on feedback. Improvement through technology enablement is recommended wherever applicable.
Our approach is to transform obstacles into opportunities to achieve customer experience excellence. This is done with unwavering customer focus, leveraging data led insights and curating custom action plans.
Our Approach leverages our in-depth understanding of the stakeholder ecosystem with insights from the Customer Experience Study and help our customers. Investigation areas are stated below:
Customer experiences form the fulcrum of business sustainability and growth. In this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world, organisations find sustaining client relationships challenging. As markets become more crowded and less predictable with shorter technological cycles, it becomes more critical to track customer satisfaction and build actions to ensure a continued positive experience for them.
The study is geared to get to the heart of the customer experience with our proprietary framework, the Experience Index (EX Index). We capture Feed-Forward elements that help in charting forward looking steps from insights on customer expectations, business priorities, and competitive perceptions. Feed-Back elements include business outcomes, experience across the lifecycle, and what worked or did not work.
The buying journey for B2B products and services is complex, long, and involves multiple stakeholders. An understanding of this journey and the moments of truth that impact the customer is critical.
Customer journey research deals with identifying key points that delineate this journey, their triggers, challenges, and actions taken along the way. Managing the journey through these interaction milestones helps improve CX and stickiness and brings a “customer first” DNA into the organisation.
Our approach involves the following
B2B organizations look to create optimal offerings that meet both stated and dormant needs and expectations of customers. Understanding this leads to compelling marketing communication, competitive positioning, and an improved product and services offering.
Customers can be segmented, and “Go to Market” can be further sharpened to resonate with their persona.
We approach the “Need and Expectations” study with a two-phased research design.
Customers interact with service providers across multiple stakeholders and projects. The project’s impact, size, and value are varied. A project that has had issues with delivery or where customer expectations has not been managed appropriately can leave an impact on the overall customer experience.
Thus, having a regular assessment of projects/critical interaction points across customer organisations aids in taking tactical steps to maintain a positive client engagement.
A continuous listening mechanism is set-up to gather feedback from key stakeholders at the completion of a project/interaction. This covers the following:
Flags are raised at regular intervals for driving interventions
In a B2B environment, every customer is critical, as the universe is finite and rarely expandable. Each one lost to competition is an indication of more that might follow. In a highly competitive marketplace or a situation of eroding market share, “Lost Customer” research provides key insights. Recurring themes and missing gaps can be addressed to improve retention rates.
We take a blind and neutral approach to the “lost customers.”
The areas assessed include
Typical stakeholders include customers who have stopped buying, as well as existing customers who did not place the last order.
Supplier engagement is critical for driving smooth business operations. The study is designed to assess relationship health, expectations, satisfaction with current processes and best practices.
Our approach captures, analyzes, and understands vendor opinions, perceptions, and experiences. Actionable insights gleaned through this exercise will help recalibrate vendors and create custom plans based on criticality, value, and business dependence.
Stakeholders typically assessed include suppliers of capital equipment, raw material, consumables, service providers (IT construction, etc.) and logistic partners.
Channel is a face of the organisation and a critical part of their go-to-market strategy. The study is geared to assess health of relationship, expectations, satisfaction levels across touch points & competitive positioning.
Actionable insights gleaned through the study help strengthen dealer engagement, improve market presence, and in-turn enhance end-customer experience.
Stakeholders typically assessed include distributors, wholesalers, dealers, sub-dealers & retailers.
Members are critical to the sustenance of “associations” and “communities” that come together to achieve a common goal. While management and operations rest with the larger entity, it becomes critical to continuously engage members so that all key objectives and expectations are met.
The study is geared to capture, analyze, and understand member opinions, perceptions, and experiences. Actionable insights gleaned from the study help identify and prioritise actions for a positive member experience.
The pandemic has transformed the way talent engages with organisations, their work, and what they look for in an employer. This has disrupted the familiar models of employee engagement and expectations.
The New World of Work studies are structured around the client context, objectives, and outcomes visualised from the research.
This entails 360-degree listening, which includes listening to internal and external stakeholders as well as talent. Apart from this, secondary research is used to triangulate insights.
Some of the areas of investigation include
The markets have been evolving with changes in global geo-political and economic factors apart from accelerated digitalization and changing customer behaviour. Every organisation deals with its own unique challenges and vision for the business.
The Business and Technology Trends study therefore adopts a bespoke research methodology to address the uniqueness of client context and research outcomes. This entails triangulating insights from multiple sources, including primary research, expert opinions, social listening, and secondary research.
A two-phased approach is adopted for the study. The first phase is exploratory and helps in deriving key hypothesis. The modes of collecting data include conversation with experts, social listening, and secondary research.
The second phase is validation and helps validate hypothesis through quantitative metrics. The inputs of the first phase helps create an optimal research design and fine-tune the survey instruments in the validation phase.
The insights are gleaned from the interplay between market, organization, and customer trends.
With dilution of differentiators and impressions getting formed during prospecting, the role of Brand in a B2B context has become paramount. Extent of familiarity, unique associations, lasting experiences are all becoming vital for brands to stand out. Sustaining brand equity and differentiation has become more important than ever before.
The customer brand assessment study helps capture, analyze, and understand Brand through multiple prisms. In addition to this, we also capture and understand the purchase funnel perspective. Actionable insights gleaned through the study will help draw an effective brand strategy in alignment with the customer and the marketplace.
Our framework helps assess ‘As-Is’ versus ‘To-Be’ positioning among both existing as well as potential customers.
Research focuses on capturing:
Brand strength is calibrated basis inputs received across customer personas to make it actionable and drive focused initiatives.
As the market for talent ebbs and flows, one thing remains, high quality talent is hard to come by. Employer Brand has become a yardstick for attracting desired talent. Employer brand is built on perceptions, values sought by the talent and their perspectives on that value vis a vis competition.
The Employer Brand study helps assess brand recall, value propositions, and expectations of talent and their proclivity towards the organization. This helps articulate the right positioning for the brand and bridge gaps (if any) with the competition.
A holistic brand assessment covering all important stakeholders, whether internal or external is crucial at different life stages of a firm, can be during pivoting or post acquisitions, etc.
The intent of this exercise is to measure and gauge how the brand manifest itself across different stakeholders. It also helps to evaluate the gaps in positioning and alignment to leaderships’ vision of the brand. Actionable insights gleaned through the study helps in designing a brand roadmap that aligns to the strategic intent of the management.
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