Context

One of the things I’m thinking about right now is how consumer sentiment impacts customer sentiment.

Sounds funny, but hear me out: Every month, we look at our consumer confidence index as part of the DTCCI dataset. And while it’s not down over last year (a not bad sign), it is down over August and the year, overall, has been trailing 2024. I think we’d qualify that as “not good.”

But what happens when confidence remains suppressed for a prolonged period of time? Do people still review products in the same way? Or do people’s expectations change? And do they express frustrations more readily?

These are questions I think are worth exploring, and I think this type of contextual awareness (much like the consumer confidence index we share) could be valuable to reviews strategies and loyalty.

You might want to change review moderation or wait longer to ask for reviews. You may want to prioritize reviews that include higher quality photos to better engage people evaluating your product for the first time and reinforce quality and value.

The list of tactics that might change is fairly comprehensive and, also, fairly simple to execute on. And it just might be that it’s worth keeping a pulse on what the macro environment is like to decide when to change those tactics.