Personalisation of products and services is key to future-proofing your business. The founder and CEO of Glacier Consulting explains why to IHRSA’s Patricia Amend

You’re speaking this month at the 15th Annual IHRSA European Congress in Marseille, France. A little preview?
We’ll be exploring the future. The next generation of consumers is going to demand different things from the brands and services they use. Get it wrong and you become irrelevant; get it right and you future-proof your business.

You describe yourself as a consumer and shopper behaviouralist. What does that mean?
I study the behaviour of shoppers and consumers – why and how people buy. This is a social science discipline that combines psychology, social anthropology and neuromarketing – a form of marketing research that focuses on consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive and affective responses to marketing stimuli. It also involves behavioural economics. Ultimately it’s about understanding the science of shopping and consumption.

What led you to embrace this particular discipline?
People have always fascinated me – not only what they do, but also how you can nudge them to behave differently. If you understand enough about consumers and their needs, there’s virtually nothing you can’t sell them.

One of the topics you focus on is personalisation, and you recently critiqued Euro Disney based on your own experience. Tell us more.

Personalisation really is the key to succeeding today. Euro Disney offers an app for its visitors, but fails to ask them who they are. Some visit the park for family rides; others for the thrill rides; and others for the shows and entertainment. If the company had simply captured the ages of my kids, it could, for instance, have suggested rides with short queues close to where we were. Similarly, it could have pushed offers to me to eat at a nearby restaurant.

It did none of this, so as a user I was left with what was essentially a digital map of the park. It could have been a personalised app that deliver added value, but in fact it would have been of as much use to me at my home in Ireland as it was in the park. This is a personalisation failure that no service business can risk today.

What lessons can health clubs draw from this example?
Really wrapping your mind around the individual rather than the masses is so important. Sometimes the ‘personal’ in personal training, or the ‘individual’ in individual instruction, wears thin – but if a member ever feels they’ve become just another body in the club, their usage and loyalty will also wane.

At every moment, every aspect of their club experience should be personal – from entering the locker room, to working out on the fitness floor, to snacking in the café. The product has to be tailored to the individual, and clubs need to find a commercially viable way to do that.

You’ve talked about the high expectations of millennials. What are their successors, Generation Z, going to want??
They’re going to want even more! These are the A.G. (after Google) consumers. They’ve grown up in a world of instant information, entertainment and feedback. This is the ‘swipe card here’ generation. They’re demanding and unforgiving. Getting your product Gen-Z-ready is critical. Companies that fail to do so are going to get caught with their pants down!