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My Top 5 Shopper Research Approaches

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Eye tracking
Tobii eye tracking glasses

Over the last few months I’ve often been asked what shopper research approaches are essential to help build effective programs . Here’s a summary of my top 5 and why I think they are useful to shopper marketers

Shopper Research Approach 1: The Usage & Attitude Surveys

It might seem odd that I start with an approach that is often more closely associated with consumer behavior than shopper behavior. Usage and attitude surveys however are essential for shopper marketers because they help identify which consumer priorities shopper activities need to address. All shopper marketing activities should be aimed at changing shopper behavior in order to drive greater consumption. As Mike Anthony and I wrote in our book “The Shopper Marketing Revolution”, “Without an increase in consumption, any increase in sales is likely to be short-lived”.

U&A studies help identify potentially valuable consumer segments; they enable marketers to benchmark consumption behavior and identify growth opportunities. As such they help shopper marketers begin to establish which shoppers they need to target. Often such studies inform shopper marketers who buys and which channels are used. In all, a good U&A is a great starting resource.

Shopper Research Approach 2: Household Panel data

Household panel data, such as Kantar’s World Panel is my second key research approach for shopper marketers. Panel data describes purchase behavior in terms of penetration, frequency and average weight of purchase. This data can be cut and diced to identify how product does and does not enter the home. This helps understand where to focus more detailed investigation of shopper behavior, define hypotheses for deeper research and to potentially scale the size of opportunities at retail.

Shopper Research Approach 3: Exit interviews

Whilst exit interviews may not always provide the most meaningful insights into why shoppers behave in a certain way, as a resource they do have a place on my list. When exit polls are targeted at the right groups of shoppers, in the right channels, they help to understand the levels of influence a store has on a shopper’s behavior. Well-constructed surveys force shoppers to recall how a retail environment has affected their plans. This helps us identify the degree to which one might be able to change a shopper’s behavior in certain store types, and this helps us prioritize channels.

Shopper Research Approach 4: Eye tracking

Eye-tracking is often tacked on to shopper research proposals as an afterthought. But when it’s used to follow target shoppers in a potentially important channel it serves to highlight key touch points in the store and perhaps more importantly, what your shoppers miss. Valuable insights can be gained into why people behave in the way they do when eye-tracking work is supported by well managed in-depth interviews. This can be invaluable in developing subsequent activities.

Shopper Research Approach 5: Virtual store simulation

For me virtual store simulations provide ultimate closure on which activities are likely to deliver the best results. All the previous approaches create the potential for teams to develop hypotheses about what might work in-store. Virtual store testing helps teams validate these hypotheses. More importantly virtual store tests help teams calculate the potential impact an in-store activity might have on the sales of their products and the products around them. This is not only great insight into the potential R.O.I. for your company but it’s also great insight to support a business case for a retailer.

If you are stuck trying to work out which shopper research approach is best for you, why not read our “Guide to GREAT shopper research” available free here?

Shopper Behavior: The allure of traditional markets

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Traditional Market Singapore
A better place to shop?

Shopper Behavior around the world is rapidly changing and yet, even in the world’s most developed economies, shoppers continue to use traditional markets. Why is this and what can be learnt from this to improve more

Going to the market: a consistent shopper behavior everywhere

From Bangkok’s wet markets, to LA’s farmers markets, traditional market places have endured the rise of the supermarket, the advent of the hypermarket and even the onslaught of internet shopping. In Hong Kong for instance nearly 80% of fresh foods are bought in markets, despite the presence  of a sophisticated and highly consolidated supermarket sector. In Europe, market day continues to draw people into the center of towns on a weekly basis. And here in Singapore, as a family we prefer to shop at our local market instead of battling through crowded, poorly stocked and over-priced supermarket alternatives. It appears that all around the world, many shoppers love their markets.

Why going to the market is an important part of shopper behavior

Traditional markets suit many shoppers because they meet a three common needs that more ‘modern’ retail environments struggle to satisfy:

The need for “Curation”

Stall holders are curators of product: in most cases the product is bought by the holder themselves. Because stall holders’ livelihoods depend on repeat business, they have a greater duty of care in product selection. As a result, shoppers often find that market stall operators know more about the products they sell and are able to direct shoppers’ in their choices.

The need for “Personalization”

Most of us enjoy great customer service and that only really comes from being recognized. For me, recognition is more than just knowing my name though, its about knowing my family, understanding our values and helping us achieve our goals.  This is pretty difficult to achieve if you are a major corporation. But the stall holders we buy from know us; they know our preferences and they know why we want certain things when we visit because we talk to each other. As a result the service we get is highly personalized.

The need for “Scarcity”

It seems ironic to suggest that we prize scarcity as shoppers when one of the problems shoppers in big stores complain about most is out-of-stocks. And yet we seem to enjoy the experience of being one of the few who are able to get the freshest products in the morning. For this reason markets are often busiest the second they open as shoppers rush to get the best stuff.

Shopper needs drive shopper behavior

In our book, “The Shopper Marketing Revolution“, Mike Anthony and I explain how shoppers’ needs drive outlet choice and therefore have a massive influence over the final product that people buy. Traditional markets satisfy more than just the humdrum needs of “great products at low prices” (here in Singapore it’s actually considerably cheaper to buy great fresh foods in a market than in the country’s badly managed chain stores). They deliver on an emotional level too, drawing loyal shoppers back time after time even if they might not offer all the conveniences of a super-store.

Many retailers have sought to emulate the environment of a traditional market and whilst some have succeeded, many have failed. In the main, these retailers have failed to recognize that a market is not just a physical environment, it’s also an emotional one. Real-world retailers will benefit from investing more in service standards, product selection and communication if they wish to maintain relationships with shoppers. This is especially online retailers potentially have an advantage – its far easier to curate and personalize if you have a sophisticated algorithm to support you. The challenge online however is to make the relationship with shoppers more real, as Zappos.com was able to as it broke open the shoe retail market.

Brands have a different challenge: how to ensure that you understand your shoppers’s needs and that your products are in the outlets shoppers’ choose. An in-depth understanding of shopper behavior helps marketers choose where to site their products and to secure the best execution. Understanding the shopper behavior that drives channel choice is therefore a critical input into defining which retail channels to prioritize. 

If you’d like to know more about channels, Mike and I have just published a new ebook  on the subject along with our colleagues at engage. You can download a copy here for free!

Its time for digital marketing & shopper marketing to align

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the future of shopping It must be frustrating to be a brand manager just now. On the one hand the competition are spending heavily on digital marketing and on the other shareholders are screaming for better ROI. Sometimes it seems that advertising agencies just can’t help – they have a digital marketing team and the have a shopper marketing team, but neither seem to talk to each other and both seem to compete with the traditional creative team.

Many companies have given up on agencies altogether, choosing to bring the disciplines in house. This creates even greater frustration – the digital marketing team sits in brand marketing, so fights with sales over e-commerce. The shopper marketing team is in sales so has weak connections with the brand team. Both teams struggle to find and retain talent and both are stretched by increasing demands from the business.

This is unnecessary but it requires companies to see the opportunities in integrating shopper, digital and consumer marketing.

Shopper marketing is digital marketing

Shopper marketing is the process of creating and implementing a marketing mix which changes purchase behavior in order to increase the consumption of a brand. Today, the processes we go through as shoppers, and the touch points that influence our behavior are both physical and virtual. I can no longer count the papers and presentations I’ve seen that explain the interplay between traditional media, online sources and in-store activities and how they influence us, in concert, through our paths to purchase. It therefore seems unconscionable that when marketing to shoppers, digital channels and media wouldn’t be part of the marketing mix that would be used. This is especially true as the opportunity to convert purchases online grows around the world. So shopper marketing must in part be digital.

Digital marketing is shopper marketing

Initially, digital marketing defined itself as the use of digital channels and tools to influence consumer’s perception of a brand. This view of the world however has become rapidly defunct. Today (hopefully) fewer brands measure digital performance in terms of likes or follows and many are seeking a more measurable return in incremental profits. At the same time it’s become harder to distinguish ‘consumers’ from ‘shoppers’ online. So today’s digital marketing is far more focused on driving consumption by acquiring and retaining brand users. For me, it’s just as difficult to imagine that this can be achieved without marketing to shoppers, as it is to imagine marketing to shoppers without digital.

No need for silos

It seems to me that many in the industry and in its advertising agencies are missing a monumentally important point: Marketing is changing.  Marketing used to have a singular focus on the consumer because, in a simpler world, if consumers wanted something and you could make it available; sales happened.

We don’t live in this simple world anymore. If we want to be successful, it’s not enough to market just to consumers, we have to market to shoppers and retail customers too. This means we need new skills and it means we need to think differently. It doesn’t mean however that we need new silos, we just need better Marketing functions.

Total Marketing

Marketing must become a far more integrated process, dedicated not only to generating desire but also to maximizing every opportunity to purchase a brand and equally to motivating retailers to support the brand. In our book, “The Shopper Marketing Revolution” Mike Anthony and I explain how marketing can re-invent itself to become a more holistic process that embraces the best of current thinking and technology.

We’ve found that this more holistic approach helps business leverage the power of digital marketing and harness the ROI potential of shopper marketing effectively. We’ve also found that it enables brands to have much more coherent conversations with their agency and retail partners. But most of all, we’ve found that the Total Marketing approach creates real alignment throughout the business.

If you’d like to read more about this revolutionary change, you can click here to download a free chapter.

Who’s leading your shopper marketing strategy?

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shopper marketing strategy

Earlier this week, Boots wrote to me to garner my reviews on some purchases a made recently (see my blog on online shopper’s needs). I get excited about this sort of thing because it shows just how engaged some retailers are getting in leveraging their relationship with their shoppers. But as a consultant to CPG manufacturers it leaves me asking “who’s leading your shopper marketing strategy?”

In this case Boots is not just gathering information about the products I’ve bought, but they’re also learning about me. This will help them target products at ‘shoppers like me’ and potential target me with products that ‘shoppers like me’ bought. If done effectively, Boots will be able to secure both greater basket spend AND the opportunity to drive margin directly and indirectly. Direct margin gains will be made by targeting higher margin products at shoppers; indirect margin gains will be made by selling target shoppers to manufacturers. The net outcome is that Boots can increasingly lead their vendors’ shopper marketing strategy.

Should retailers lead your shopper marketing strategy?

When retailers get leadership over how a category, and the brands within it, are marketed to their shoppers, they gain leverage on brands. There’s nothing new in this. Ever since the dawn of category management in the late eighties, retailers have secured a position of relative power over their manufacturing partners.

They can use this power to secure higher shares of a manufacturers sales and drive greater margins as a result. This creates a problem for brands. Boots in this case will have their own strategy which they’ll seek support for, but other retailers, for instance Superdrug to use a UK-based example, will have differing and naturally competitive strategies. This means that brands need to adapt their strategies to fit the retailers’ needs, rather than those of their consumers. This is problematic because retailers have a very different view of the shopper than manufacturers do.

A retailer’s view of the shopper

Retailers have a warped view of their shoppers because they can only see what  shoppers do in their outlets. This is at the exclusion of what shoppers do in other outlets and of the consumer behavior that shoppers support. Shoppers only buy products to support a consumer need.

Take the Toni and Guy product I bought in the picture above. I don’t use this product – my wife does. I’m not the target consumer for this product – my wife is. Unilever (who make the product) knows this. Further they know that encouraging more consumers like my wife to use their product is the key to un-tapping growth from this particular segment. They know that in most cases, my wife will buy this for herself and that when men like me buy Toni and Guy products, we are usually doing so on instruction, not on impulse.

Boots does not know this. Oddly when they ask about usage of the product (as they do when gathering reviews) they ask how often product is used, not who uses it. They do know about me, and they know I buy a product which I like and which gets used regularly and they know I’ve bought the product in their online store. Follow this to its logical conclusion and they’ll create a segment of shoppers who they assume are also consumers. Then, they’ll try and sell the opportunity to market to this segment back to Unilever and their competitors.

This warped view of the shopper could lead to miss-marketing and waste.

A manufacturer’s view of the shopper

It seems ironic that a manufacturer should have a clearer view of shoppers’ behavior than a retailer, but in fact this is the case. The best marketers should have clearly defined consumer segments which they wish to target. They should then overlay equally well-understood shopper segments onto this consumer segmentation to define target shoppers. Against these target shoppers marketers can prioritize the channels and marketing activities which are most likely to reap the outcomes they want for their brands. The result? Unilever should be able to educate Boots and not vice versa.

Marketers should lead in shopper marketing strategy

The success or failure of a brand does not depend on its performance in your best customer. It depends on the volume of consumers who use the brand frequently and in the right volumes. Shoppers are the key to this because whether they buy for themselves or others, they make the product available to those all-important consumers. Allowing a trade partner, no matter how influential to lead shopper marketing strategy is therefore a huge risk.

Too few marketers take on full accountability for the way their products are marketed in retail and this ought to change.

Taking accountability for shopper marketing strategy demands that the Marketing function develops insights into both consumer and shopper behavior; that Marketing takes and active role in prioritizing retail channels and in providing strategic support for the Sales function to leverage relationships with trade customers more effectively. This is an organizational challenge for those companies who place Shopper Marketing within the sales function but it’s a necessary challenge if such companies wish to grow in the future.

Contact me if you want to discuss how you might lead your shopper marketing strategy in the future.