Visibility Levels of the Lingering Type of Ending.
Lingering is one of the 8 types of Ending experienced by the consumer.
It is the service, digital or product relationship that has effectively ended due to lack of use yet may still be unknowingly available to the consumer or continuing activity out of sight and mind.
Some services become so background to our lives that we forget we are even involved with them. These lingering services may still be capturing data from us while we go about our lives, unaware of their presence. Maybe they still draw a small amount from our bank accounts. Product relationships that were once exciting and used constantly, can change as our needs change. This is evident in clothes that people forget are there at the back of a cupboard. In social media people quickly forget about last month’s pictures from a party or a flippant comment they sent in anger. Yet these linger, saved forever, unless actively deleted.
When the consumer stops using a physical product, they must tolerate its existence until they remove it. It is physically visible in their environment. For example, upgrading a mattress requires removing the old one, otherwise it will clutter up the house or bedroom. Many companies use this issue to improve the sale of a new product. Mattress companies have been removing old mattresses for a while. Ikea have started doing removal as part of their delivery.
Service clutter is less physical. It often only surfaces periodically in bank statements for example. But at least it is there once a month.
Some digital experiences are visible only through functions in settings. The consumer has to dig into the functionality to see what is happening, where their data goes, what is being processed.
Other lingering assets are entirely invisible to the consumer. For example, carbon impact, un-recyclable plastics, or the processing of unclosed account data could be lingering far beyond user perception or access.
We can look at all of these as layers of visibility to the consumer.
