Category — Consumer Insights

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>>

Groupon has succeeded where similar concepts haven’t because it taps so cleverly into consumer psychology. Groupon, as you probably know, “offers for sale a deep discount coupon from a business in your town,” but honors it only if a specified number of others also buy into the deal.

The first bit of cleverness is the local angle, because Groupon inherently gears its offers to neighborhood establishments. The next clever thing is that Groupon makes even a relatively small discount feel like a big deal. Then there’s the “tipping point” aspect, which “adds a certain thrill to the proceedings. You’re invested in the outcome"… read>>

The Hub Magazine, Vol. 7, Issue 42. The entire issue of May/Jun 2011 edition of The Hub Magazine, centered on consumer and shopper insights, featuring a cover story interview with Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble.