Category — Shopper Marketing

Tide invites loyalty with a better retail experience. Granted, providing good service is not necessarily mandatory for some brands. Does anyone really need a help line for toothpaste or paper towel? Probably not.

But to the extent that every product — no matter how commoditized it may be — ultimately is sold in some kind of store suggests that some version of customer service could make a difference, especially where brand loyalty is concerned …
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Nickel Treats, Pret A Manger and Showroom Showtime. A British fast-food restaurant with a French name hopes to build loyalty across the United States with a special focus on customer service.

Pret A Manger, which translates into “ready to eat,” starts by giving prospective hires a six-hour trial run, followed by a Survivor-style vote by co-workers. The 90 percent who make the cut are given “a thick binder of instructions” that tells them, among other things, to always be busy, sometimes give out free goodies to regulars and always share their “true character” with customers … read >>

Announcing the 2011 Hub Prize competition winners! From more than 80 entries, our distinguished panel of judges selected the 36 boldest and brightest ideas in retail and shopping excellence, which earned either Gold, Silver or Bronze medals. For a complete list of winners, in alphabetical order by prize level, click here.

Barry Judge of Best Buy re-imagines retail in 140 characters or less. By Tim Manners. With some 18,000 followers on Twitter and more than 2,000 tweets to his name, few marketing chiefs have embraced emerging media as personally as Best Buy’s Barry Judge.

As music and movies migrate from discs to downloads, and consumer-electronics devices grow ever smaller, the acres of retail that once were so formidable suddenly may not be so desirable anymore. As a big-box retailer, Best Buy has no choice but to figure out how to make digital media part of its solution, and Barry is thoroughly absorbed in that challenge … 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 >>

Break through the rational barriers with value beyond price. By John Meyer. Can you believe that the day has finally come when Walmart actually wants its shoppers to use coupons and match prices? Strategically, this is probably the right thing for them to do, but if you are a brand trying to break the hi/lo price game, it’s like the dealer feeding the addict.