MKT ELEC 404

Special Topics in Marketing Management

Maria Cristina G. Morfi, MBA
What is Customer Decision
Journey
• The consumer decision journey, or the McKinsey
Model, is a model developed by management
consulting company McKinsey & Company that
reflects the customer buying process. This
framework evaluates how consumers make
purchasing decisions and the ways marketers can
influence these decisions. Marketers can use this
model to evaluate their key touchpoints or
interactions with customers.
Steps in 1. Trigger: A stimulus or trigger begins the
Customer consumer decision journey when an individual
Decision notices they have a problem and need a
company's product or service to resolve it.
Journey
Steps in 2. Initial consideration set: When considering
Customer a purchase, an individual reflects on their
Decision initial consideration set or brands they
immediately think of due to brand awareness.
Journey
Steps in 3. Evaluation: Consumers gather information
Customer from researching multiple sources and reading
Decision reviews to decide which brand has what they
want or need.
Journey
Steps in 4. Buying: Once the consumer filters their
Customer options from the information they gathered in
Decision the evaluation stage, they choose a brand and
start the purchase.
Journey
Steps in 5. Ongoing exposure: After purchasing the
Customer product or service, the individual creates
expectations from their post-purchase
Decision experience to help them make their next
purchase decision.
Journey
Steps in 6. Loyalty loop: Depending on a customer's
Customer satisfaction with the product and company
Decision determines whether they become loyal
customers and brand advocates.
Journey
When should you use the
consumer decision journey?
Typically, a company uses the consumer
decision journey when navigating how it
can empower consumers and encourage
purchases. This model helps companies
understand how their marketing practices
can adapt to their consumers'
expectations. The consumer decision
journey also helps companies identify and
improve their touch points. Because the
consumer decision journey begins even
before the buyer is aware, it is important to
build your brand presence in the
community and across various channels.
How to Use The Customer
Decision Journey
1. Get to know your consumers
The first step in using the consumer
decision journey in a marketing strategy is to
identify a company's consumers and their
motivators. You can also look at your
customers' past experiences with your
company and their recent behaviors to learn
how you can market to them. Learning
about your customers can help you support
them in the consumer decision journey and
understand what they need. For example,
one way to do this is to hold a focus group to
develop a buyer persona.
How to Use The Customer
Decision Journey
2. Create brand awareness
After getting to know your customers, focus
on increasing customers' knowledge of the
company. Building strong brand awareness
can help your company appear more often
during the initial consideration step. This is
especially important to match the marketing
trends of the modern era that go beyond
one-way conversations and instead focus on
building a relationship with consumers. You
can develop brand awareness by sponsoring
events or posting content on social media.
How to Use The Customer
Decision Journey
3. Tailor messaging
Next, evaluate what area of the process the
company has the greatest room for
improvement in, such as the initial
consideration, and create a message that
addresses those vulnerabilities. For example,
a car company launches a marketing
campaign that provides financial protection
for consumers by allowing them to return
their car if they lose their job. This campaign
helps reach new consumers who were
initially hesitant about making an expensive
purchase.
How to Use The Customer
Decision Journey
4. Offer discounts
To encourage consumers at the moment of
purchase, offer special deals and promotions
that are available for a limited time. This can
help secure their decision in purchasing
from a company and avoid customers
abandoning their shopping carts. Personalize
the discount to match the item they are
purchasing. To do this, you can send them a
discount for the specific item they were
thinking of buying but left in their online
shopping cart.
How to Use The Customer
Decision Journey
5. Keep your messages current
Continually provide reliable and timely
information for your consumers on your
webpages, social media profiles and other
related channels. Make sure your
information is easy to find to encourage
buyers to keep coming back. Create content
that your consumers are likely to share with
others.
How to Use The Customer
Decision Journey
6. Invest in the right channels
When choosing what marketing channels to
use, pick the channels your customers
already use. For instance, if your customers
use social media, post updates there.
Become a part of where their conversations
are happening to take part in their consumer
decision journey.
Decision Journey
Map
A journey map is a diagram or other
visual representation of the process
an individual goes through to
complete a goal. This tool can be
helpful to identify barriers or process
inefficiencies in consumer
purchasing. In this article, we discuss
a journey map and its various
components, and we outline other
similar mapping methods for
businesses.
Decision Journey
Map
Business experts often refer to this
term as the customer journey map
and they use it to chart a customer’s
interactions with a company,
including awareness of a product or
service, options to purchase,
accessing customer service and
sharing feedback or complaints on
public platforms.
 Five Moment of Truth in Marketing
Customer • FMOT (First Moment of Truth)

Shopping
• SMOT (Second Moment of Truth)
• <ZMOT (Less than Zero Moment of

Behavior Truth
• ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth)

Analysis • UMOT (Ultimate Moment of Truth

Five-Moment
Why are
journey maps
important?
• Identifies navigation issues
• Identifies barriers between
customers and customer
support
• Identifies opportunities to
increase user-friendly content
• Identifies gaps within the
customer experience
Parts of the
Journey Map

• Objective
• Identify and target one key
demographic
• Touchpoints
• Required resources
Types of journey
maps
1. The current state journey map
This map assesses how customers
currently engage with the business. The
map identifies existing pain points,
allowing a business to test incremental
changes within the journey.
Types of journey
maps
2. Future state journey map
This map assesses how customers will
engage with the business in the future,
depending on trends or product releases.
Businesses use these to determine how to
alter the customer journey to
accommodate new services or experiences.
Types of journey
maps
3. Day in the life journey map
Similar to current state journey maps,
these maps identify how customers engage
today, but in a broader sense. These maps
examine everything customers do even if it
doesn't involve the business. They analyze
the lives of customers to find pain points
that new products or services address.
Types of journey
maps
4. Blueprint journey map
More often depicted as diagrams,
these maps provide a simplified version
of either a current or future state map.
This map includes other processes and
variables the company wants to test and
assesses how they affect the map.
Let’s Do This

• Students are tasked to

prepare their individual
customer decision journey
map. The journey map must
include all the elements. The
mapping must be illustrated
on ¼ illustration board. This
is 50 pts activity.