Category — Consumer Insights

Connect with consumers by understanding their brand rituals. By Don Growhoski. We’ve all been there. Whether we’ve been tasked with introducing or repositioning a brand, fighting off private label, finding new reasons-to-believe or reinvigorating a mature brand, we’ve all faced the challenge of finding new nuggets of information, developing new marketing strategies, and producing new creative executions that will transform our brands and allow us to build stronger and more meaningful relationships with consumers.

As human beings, we almost always fall into a predictable behavioral path. We may conduct a few focus groups, hoping consumers will tell us something we don’t already know, or maybe we’ll spend a few hours with our intended consumers in their homes, or at the store, and hope some hidden behavior that we can leverage will appear. … read >>

Brands that create cravings are the shopper’s best reward. By Liz Crawford. For routine shopping trips, shoppers have an internal mental calculator that they use to regulate their purchases. Given this — especially in the face of a recession — why do shoppers buy on impulse? The answer is that about 25 percent of the shopper’s total budget is subconsciously set aside for opportunistic buys.

According to a 2010 study by Dr. Kirk Wakefield at Baylor University, shoppers don’t deviate much from their budgets, but they still make plenty of impulse buys. Dr. Wakefield says "in-store slack" is part of a mental budget that shoppers know they’ll spend, but aren’t necessarily sure on which specific items. He states that "for the majority of consumers, having in-store slack appears to be a rational way to use the store to cue needs and preserve self-control." … read >>

Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble seeks deeper brand meaning. By Tim Manners. No longer is it good enough to make the best products. At Procter & Gamble, a brand is not a brand until it makes a difference in your life. A P&G brand must have a purpose that transcends its benefits.

It may not be a new idea that a brand should solve your problems or make your life happier. But as Procter & Gamble marketing chief Marc Pritchard suggests, it is transforming the way marketing — if the term even still applies — is done at Procter & Gamble … read>>

Satisfying simple needs at retail is more complex than ever. A roundtable featuring: Scott Finlow of PepsiCo, Dorlisa Flur of Family Dollar, Jim Figura of Colgate-Palmolive, Raymond Burke of Indiana University and Ben DiSanti of TPN.

What is the one thing that shoppers want most? Scott Finlow: On a conscious level, shoppers are looking for both individual and family solutions, and they are “redefining value” as they do that. They are not just looking for lower prices, but rather a broader occasion that suggests what you get over what you pay … read >>

Johnson & Johnson makes shopping better for moms. By Paul Thompson. While much has been written about the importance of getting on the shopping list, this is only one of the hurdles a brand faces. Shoppers have lots of choices and point-of-purchase is still where the majority of purchase decisions are made.

Because of this, Johnson & Johnson sought to improve the in-store shopper experience in children’s pediatric, over-the-counter medications through a better understanding of moms and their needs … read>>

Social shoppers redefine the shopping experience. By Lisa Diehlmann. Social shoppers are people who use social media to learn about, interact with, and purchase brands. That may not sound remarkable, but they have completely reframed the idea of a full, engaged life and the shopping experience that results. They are also changing the rules of shopping as they go.

The world of the social shopper is a richly connected network of people, brands, products, retailers and channels. There are distinct benefits to being this socially plugged-in. Not surprisingly, their numbers are on the rise, as are their activities … read>>

Technology is no substitute for shopper-focused collaboration. By Spencer L. Hapoienu. How often do you get an offer that is truly relevant to you? What percentage of the offers that you receive online or in the mail are actually of interest? Of the billions of dollars spent by manufacturers and retailers on marketing, it’s likely that less than five percent of the money spent is actually customer-specific and relevant.

With all of the technology and data horsepower available to track purchases, behavior, and lifestyles — which makes it so much easier than ever before to know which customers fall into which categories and to market to them with specific offers and creative messaging — retailer-manufacturer partnership marketing is still way down on the list of priorities and way down on the percent of dollars invested … read>>

Asian women are more empowered than ever before. By Victoria Corsi. I was recently asked by a marketing magazine here in Asia to evaluate what I thought of the new (or should I say, reinvented) Singapore Airlines campaign. The campaign, if you have not seen it, shows the familiar Singapore Girl — a lovely Singapore Airlines flight attendant—walking around various iconic locations of the world (Paris, Wuzhen, San Francisco, and Jaisalmer) with a serene look on her face, helping people as she goes.

After gathering opinions both in-house (from my team in our Singapore office) and from others in the creative industry in Asia, I’ve determined this is a very polarizing campaign. To be clear: I like it. It’s a pleasant commercial to watch in a media space cluttered with a lot of harassment, shameless credentialing, and cheesy, “hilarious” creative. And I know this ad is Singapore Airlines: The campaign ticks all the brand building-boxes and enforces its unique iconography without showing a single A380 or SilverKris (until the end frame) … read>>

Capturing consumers while shopping is a moving experience. By Tom Conti. I’m taking my family on a two-week-long trip to Italy this summer, and since it’ll be one of those once-in-a-lifetime vacations, I’m hoping to capture as many of the experiences as possible in photographs. That means I’m in the market for a new digital camera.

Like all technologies, digital cameras are subject to Moore’s Law, which posits that advancements in technology double approximately every two years. In the digital age, however, that window of time has quickly been reduced to something like 18 days instead of 18 months. The exponential speed at which things change and improve can turn the process of finding and buying a product like the right vacation-ready camera into a frustrating pursuit … read>>

Consumer and shopper distinctions are messier than they used to be. By Fred Bidwell. Do you see that guy walking down the street with smartphone in hand? He may be texting a friend. Or he may be window-shopping for a new pair of shoes.

That meant brands and retailers got away with looking at consumers and shoppers as distinct entities to be dealt with separately, first by brand advertising and later through shopper marketing. Then life got messy … read>>

Actions speak louder than word in the store aisle. By Beth Ann Kaminkow. When it comes to identifying the most potent shopper insights, could it be that we are drowning in data? Loyalty card data, purchase data, IRI data — as marketers, we are not lacking in analytics. But could it be that the “optics” are more important than the analytics — or at least equally important — when it comes to truly understanding how shoppers behave?

How shoppers actually behave is more revealing than what they say. It’s almost cliché to say that people often say one thing and do another. We know this to be true personally, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. It’s simply the nature of human behavior. You need to be a psychology expert to analyze all the theories of why … read>>

Truly useful insights must capture consumer attitudes, behaviors and beliefs. By Beth Craig. It used to be that brands only had to think about the consumer. With the continued evolution of shopper marketing and the need to more closely link marketing outreach to purchase behavior, marketers now want to know all about the shopper.

As a result, the newest bright-and-shiny object has become insights. Everyone wants them — consumer insights, shopper insights, retailer insights. However, considerable misunderstanding lingers in marketer circles about what constitutes an insight and, equally important, how to apply them to ensure some sort of business solution: fending off a competitive challenge, meeting changing shopper tastes or some other need … read>>

Are shoppers as enamored with technology as we are? By Sarah Chow and Diana Boynton. It’s undeniable: The use of technology among consumers is growing. It’s something we must recognize, respect and, most of all, pursue. But we have to ask ourselves: What happens when consumers turn into shoppers? Are we blinded by the bright and shiny, double- and triple-digit increases in consumer digital adoption?

Let’s take a step back and remember the big picture. While the spending on and execution of digital vehicles are growing, what is the actual penetration and growth of engagement among shoppers? Those numbers may not be quite as bright or nearly as shiny … read>>

A path-to-purchase framework turns insights into opportunities. By Todd Engels. Recently, I was speaking with a senior marketer from a large packaged-goods company who was expressing frustration that, despite the company’s resources and significant investment in research, he was unable to get his hands on truly useful shopper insights to support his retail programming ideas.

That conversation reminded me of a verse from the poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by the English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Coleridge’s line (somewhere my college English Lit professor is smiling) perfectly captures one of the key challenges we face as shopper marketers … read>>

Are shopper insights really driving your shopper-marketing programs? By Kim Finnerty. I already have a bunch of insights, and I don’t even have time to read through all of them! Why are you telling me I need more?” This is a refrain we shopper-insights types hear often. The answer, of course, is that — most likely — the research your organization has already done was done among brand consumers, so the insights you’ve developed are all about brand consumption motivations and behavior.

You’ve done ethnographic studies to see how people use your brand in their homes. You’ve done surveys and focus groups among people who recently ate, drank, wore, drove or played with your brand to find out how they perceive it and whether it is fulfilling their emotional needs. This research, and the insights that spring from it, help you craft your brand positioning and communication strategies, and they point the way to brand innovation … read>>

Shoppers employ a decision process that’s unrelated to consumer attitudes. By Al Wittemen and Paul Price. The premise of shopper marketing sounds simple enough: how to connect with shoppers in a way that solves their problems quickly and easily. Delivering on that premise, however, is not nearly so simple for one reason more than any other: the path-to-purchase is not linear; it’s multi-dimensional.

In other words, it’s no longer adequate to think of the path-to-purchase as being neatly compartmentalized into “at-home,” “on-the-go” and “in-store.” We need to understand what the shopper is doing, when and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it, under each and every conceivable circumstance … read>>

You can get straight A’s in marketing and still flunk ordinary life. By Tim Manners. Three years ago, the first time we asked agencies and brand marketers to identify the best practitioners in shopper marketing, we were overwhelmed by 726 responses. This year, we received 2,489 (!) responses, reflecting considerable growth in shopper marketing since early 2008.

That year, this year — and each intervening year — Mars Advertising claimed the top spot on the agency chart. For the third year in a row, RPM Connect was second among agencies, and for the first time, JWT/OgilvyAction was third … read>>

Generation gaps are not so gaping when it comes to shopping behavior. It’s almost an article of faith among marketers that each generation of consumers is different from the next. But how different are we, really?

We received more than 750 responses, led by Generation X (48.2%), Baby Boomers (31.6%), Millennials (17.3%) and the Silent Generation (2.8%). The Greatest Generation did not respond … read>>