Solving The Identity Crisis: Putting Today's Fragmented Consumer Back Together

A consumer journey can fail when customer identifiers and data are disconnected across channels. A shopper browses on a phone, abandons a cart, and later receives a generic welcome email on a desktop instead of a cart reminder. The shopper then buys elsewhere and may receive a competing offer, resulting in a lost sale. Fragmented systems create customer friction and business liability, with many businesses citing fragmentation as a major operational challenge. Trust is central: brands build or lose trust in each interaction. Brands need a current, accurate view of consumers based on where they are today, enabling recognition across touchpoints and preferred channels. Consumers increasingly expect frictionless experiences, and Gen Z expects brands to adapt to their needs.

"A customer searching online for a pair of boots browses for the product on her phone. She finds some enticing options, but then abandons, and forgets about, her cart. Cut to a couple of days later, when, browsing on her desktop, she receives a generic welcome email from the retailer instead of a reminder about the boot-filled shopping cart awaiting her final click. She buys her boots elsewhere, and in the meantime, receives an offer for the same boots from a competitor. She's wasted her time - and the merchant has lost a sale."

"This is the consumer impact of disconnected data - email addresses, loyalty numbers and other identifiers, siloed in their own channels. It's a turn-off for customers and a liability for businesses: nearly 30% of businesses point to fragmented systems as one of their top three operational challenges, the industry publication CMSWire found in a survey last year."

""Brands can build or lose trust with consumers in each interaction. Personalization goes a long way to build trust with customers when you can recognize them across touchpoints, reach them in their preferred channel and recognize their relationship with your brand," he said. What brands and advertisers need, then, is not only a full view of the consumer from any point in time, but a "current and accurate view of the consumer based on where they are today," Martin continued."

"Identity fragmentation is not new, but the explosive growth of digital culture has raised the stakes. Consumers now expect frictionless digital experiences across every channel, while Gen Z, in Martin's words, expects "brands to adapt to their needs." As that generation, the largest in the U.S. at 86 million, matures, the pressure is"

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