Imagine walking into a giant library with millions of books. How do you decide which book to read and what to give your attention to? There are millions of authors competing for your attention.
It’s similar in everyday life. Everyone everywhere seems to have strained attention spans with advertisers constantly competing for what little is available. Most people are busy with jobs, family responsibilities and the pressures of maintaining a modern household and lifestyle. Add to that the ever-increasing demands of managing personal and business technology and keeping up with social media, and you have what’s called “time poverty” or “time scarcity”.
On top of this, people are bombarded with marketing messages. This includes a tsunami of TV, print and billboard advertising, as well as Google, Facebook and other digital ads on computers and mobile devices. Marketing experts estimate most Americans are exposed to thousands of ads each day. To combat this assault, consumers have developed behaviors like “banner blindness” to ignore advertising as much as they can.
In this state of affairs it’s easy for retailers’ messages to get drowned out and ignored. For retailers to get consumer attention that they need to survive they must excel at understanding their customers and getting the right message to them consistently and frequently.
