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.

This kind of insight is completely different than the traditional insight gleaned from consumer research, which is all about usage and occasion. We have developed consumer decision trees and set retail shelves based on consumption irrespective of the fact that shoppers employ a decision process that may not have anything to do with their attitudes as consumers.

It’s also completely different from traditional shopper research — to the extent that it happens at all — which needs to get at issues of shopping behavior and not just brand awareness and attitudes. Given that 37 percent of consumers are also the primary shoppers for the household, it’s important that we look at the shopper decision process, and not just the consumer mindset.

The big questions marketers must address are: Which levers should I pull to reach my shoppers? How can we guide our shoppers from the time they decide they have a need to the time they pick a specific product and make a transaction?

The answers to these questions represent an evolution and not a revolution. When “category management” became popular in the 1980s, both manufacturers and retailers broke the store down into single categories and treated them as business units. While this brought some discipline to managing the supply chain, it failed to take a holistic view of the store or the shopper. We forgot that shoppers shop the store, and make channel, mission, and occasion decisions first, category and brand decisions second.

We need to understand the critical selection/de-selection levers from home to channel to store to category to brand. This will enable an understanding of which shopper-marketing vehicles will be the most relevant to our targeted shopper segment — those that will create demand and drive the highest return-on-investment.

To accomplish this, we have to make fundamental changes to understand where decisions are made, where and how to connect with shoppers on their terms, what to say, how to say it and how much money to spend. We need to have measurements in place so that we can link the research to the activation to the results.

A Shopper-Centric Model

Many retailers and packaged-goods marketers are now in the early stages of seeking a better understanding of the shopper in order to execute multi-dimensional shopper marketing.

Traditionally, a packaged-goods marketer will start a planning cycle with a market-mix analysis to understand the impact of traditional, off-line media and their trade spending. On top of that, they might do some ethnographic, in-store or online research to gain a better understanding of consumers or shoppers.

Where loyalty card data is available, it is integrated as well. This work tends to be done annually, at best, and has some significant gaps. The emerging digital space is either under-represented or a blind spot. The integration of these various analyses is very hard to assimilate into something that is actionable.

What’s needed is a longitudinal, shopper-centric, market-mix model that fills the gaps. Such a model is build up from the shopper, as opposed to traditional market-mix models that take a top-down approach by media type and designated market area. It integrates on-line and off-line media along with in-store and on-line purchasing.

This provides the ability measure on-line advertising and circular exposure to in-store purchases, by shopper segment, for example. Overlay longitudinal retailer-specific shopper research (qualitative and quantitative) and you are looking at the shopper through a whole new lens.

Another key element to this is “speed.” Along with the gaps in today’s research process, it is too slow. The ability to process and respond to this data quickly will provide a competitive advantage. This is a new way of thinking and approaching the dynamic path-to-purchase with the right research that will inform actionable, shopper-relevant strategies.

A Better Shopping Experience

The most important thing, of course, is what shoppers ultimately experience while they are shopping. The challenge is to take the brand equity and the end-benefit and communicate and connect with shoppers where and when they are ready to buy. Without that, you’re competing on the basis of product and price — but what shoppers are buying today are solutions.

When you cut through it all, marketing is about solving problems for consumers and shoppers. We all like to talk about the “experience,” which often sounds exciting — like having jugglers or mimes entertaining us while we’re pantry-loading toilet paper and frozen vegetables. A really good, insightful shopping experience is a good deal more subtle and grounded than that.

For example, Ocean Spray improved the shopping experience simply by adding a handle to its big jugs of drinks, making it easier for shoppers to pick them up and put them in their shopping cart. Swiffer came up with a way to display its refills that made it easier for shoppers to find the supplies they needed, quickly and easily. Glidden developed a line of sample-sized cans of paint that give the shopper an opportunity to test colors (this also provided the retailer with an opportunity for an additional sale). Novartis designed end-aisle displays that offer a variety of items based on need — cold/flu, allergy, pain and gastro-intestinal.

Burt’s Bees recognized that the primary “natural personal-care” shopper was less concerned with price and most concerned with seeking or avoiding ingredients. These shoppers realized not all “natural” products were created equal and needed to trust brand claims. Their shopper-marketing strategy is executed extremely well at retailers like Target, where shoppers are engaged with point-of-sale graphics that make an emotional connection, educate shoppers and offer trial. This has driven year-over-year, double-digit growth, only rarely with price discounts.

The best examples are in the health and beauty care category. They’re selling beauty, youth and slimness — hard benefits. Health and wellness, too — they’re selling cures. You can walk through the health and beauty care aisle at retail versus any other aisle and see a difference. They have all the benefits in one or two lines, or just a few letters. They communicate that way, simply and effectively.

It all sounds so obvious, but if you have a headache and you need a particular kind of pain relief, Novartis solves your problem and improves your shopping experience. At most stores, the pain-relievers are shelved in such a way that you’d get a headache even if you didn’t have one before you got there. This isn’t brain surgery — it’s marketing. The simpler it is, the more effective it is, because it’s the simple things that stand out.

At the same time, developing the insights to create a simpler and more satisfying shopping experience is hard work. It takes time and money. But it delivers on the promise of shopper marketing because it puts the focus on shopper engagement and conversion.

We can’t talk about a multi-dimensional path-to-purchase and continue to take a linear approach to it. If the path-to-purchase is the foundation of shopper marketing, then we need to understand its many dimensions, conduct research to understand the shopper in each of those dimensions, and create offerings based on that.

We need to take the data we have on retailers and shoppers and use it to activate programs that communicate and connect better with shoppers. It’s not enough to give them products at good prices; we need to deliver solutions and a favorable shopping experience. When we have the data and we know how to use it, we can link the ideas with the activation, and sales will improve.

That’s what the new, multi-dimensional path-to-purchase is all about.