The study cited earlier discussed the use of social listening platforms more broadly—to understand consumer preferences, habits and expectations in general—and was conducted during a webinar. What these studies point toward is the fact that social listening tools have not penetrated into the list of must-haves for many marketers.

A 2018 article in the Detroit Free Press detailed how GM used in-car Wi-Fi to track the radio listening habits of 90,000 of its customers for three months. The experiment—which required participants to opt in and aggregated and anonymized the data—was designed to determine if radio listening habits correlated with retail visits and purchases.

The Digital Factor. With physical stores unavailable or unappealing during the pandemic, consumers have ramped up the digital component of their shopping. “The innovation has already been there, but the adoption is now,” Advincula of Ipsos said. As with other aspects of consumer activity, there has been variation by income in the degree to which they have increased this behavior.