Category — Shopper Insights

Do what’s right for today’s digital shopper — not just what’s on-trend. By Ken Barnett. Any marketer would be excited about the overarching potential benefits that emerging media provide. We can’t help but be enthusiastic as we contemplate the what-ifs.

On top of that, add the benefits of being both green and cost-efficient. There are, however, some alarm bells reminiscent of the irrational exuberance of the dot-com years when we hear people speak of “the digital path-to-purchase” — implying that this is a strategic foundation … read >>

Digital-media strategies must satisfy a hierarchy of needs and values. By Jason Rogers. Much has been said and written about the distinction between consumers and shoppers. We’re consumers every moment of our lives. We’re bombarded with marketing from the moment we awake and hear a deejay promoting a concert until late at night when we see a commercial for a new hybrid car. As a result, most consumers shut out all but the most engaging messages.

Shoppers, on the other hand, simply want and need something. New car, laptop or home? No question, shoppers are invested. Toilet paper, canned vegetables or after-school snacks for the kids? Hmm, maybe not as invested. Despite operating at very different ends of the consideration spectrum, there is a common denominator: Shoppers have a goal. The level of effort, enthusiasm and time they will invest is based on what that something is … read >>

The more things stay the same, the more they change. By Beth Ann Kaminkow. As a kid, I always wondered what was meant by the expression, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Looking around, I couldn’t come up with many examples. It seemed like just another quaint expression adults threw out when they wanted to sound insightful.

Looking at the world today, however, through the lens of technology, I think I see the truth behind the cliché. And I think that, as marketers, this truth deserves our closer inspection. My first observation — see if you agree — is that the adults may have gotten the phrase backwards. Perhaps it should be: The more things stay the same, the more they change … read >>

Shoppers are evolving amid rapid environmental changes. By Randi Moore. With online retail currently growing at rates three times faster than overall market and supercenter rates, the path to growth has clearly shifted from new store openings to e-commerce. According to a report by MasterCard Advisors, e-commerce sales increased 15.2 percent year-over-year in June 2011 — the eighth straight month of double-digit growth and the 23rd month in a row that online purchases have grown.

Such rapid change can lead to extinctions. So what will go the way of the dinosaur — the mall, the supercenter, the big-box category killers? Perhaps only vending machines are safe from the digital onslaught. It is important to remember, however, that shoppers are shoppers, and that while the number of online transactions per buyer is increasing, the number of online sites visited and the average dollar-value of an online purchase has declined. This confirms that shoppers are still cautious and surgical in their approach to shopping, both online and in-store … read >>

Assortment optimization technologies create a better shopping experience. By Tom Young and Greg Orth. Successful retailers are rethinking the notion of carrying massive numbers of items on their shelves and realizing that their stores have unique consumer dynamics. Many owe much of their success to a shopper-centric approach that is easy to implement via assortment optimization technologies.

Walmart struggled to redefine the role of individual categories in its stores and the depth and breadth of product assortment choices. As a result, its (now-ended) item reduction initiative alienated many shoppers because Walmart did not clearly understand the degree of loyalty to particular products. Just because a product is a slower-moving item does not mean that it does not have a loyal following. Take organic soup, for example: It does not have high velocities relative to the category, but if it is not available, the shopper will leave the store without making a soup purchase … read >>

Retailer websites are surprisingly strong as a shopper marketing tool. By John Kuendig. Retailer websites … love them or hate them, they still matter. Although retailer websites are one of the most mature digital shopper-marketing tools, brand marketers would do well not to ignore them as an “outdated” technology.

According to Compete.com, Walmart.com attracted 49 million visitors during May, 2011, while Target.com pulled in 39 million. Best Buy had 23 million visitors, Kroger saw 3 million and Publix 1.4 million. Meanwhile, brands are busy building their own presence on the web — mainly to serve the shopper’s need for product and usage information or to engage them in the brand experience. However, these sites don’t generate anywhere near the traffic that store websites do … read >>

The shopping list establishes preferences and influences behavior. By Sara Manke. Get on the shopping list.” It’s an imperative for nearly every shopper-marketing program we tackle because the brands that get on the list are the ones that get in the cart. The creation of a list represents an opportunity to influence the choice of where to shop and what to buy at a critical turning point in the shopping cycle. Getting on that list means making the cut. So, how do brands earn the right to be listworthy? How can brands take advantage of that critical moment of influence?

We recently designed and executed a study to understand how shopping lists are created and how to get on them. We first recruited a qualitative sample of shoppers to conduct blogs for a week to monitor their listmaking and list-using habits. We then followed up with a quantitative study to determine how prevalent and penetrated these thoughts, behaviors and patterns really are at the retailer-specific level for 20-plus top customers … read >>

The Hub Magazine, Vol. 7, Issue 44. The entire issue of Sep/Oct 2011 edition of The Hub Magazine, centered on emerging media, featuring a cover story interview with Barry Judge of Best Buy.

Also featuring a roundtable on social media and shopping, with Dennis Maloney of Domino’s Pizza, David Sommer of Facebook, Kevin Biondi of Staples and Tim Austin of TPN and 13 other articles. download pdf >>

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>>

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>>