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.

During the past six years of working closely with leading packaged-goods companies to develop their shopper-marketing capabilities, what strikes me is that, much like the sailors surrounded by water, most mid- to large-size companies aren’t really lacking for the raw material to generate insights.

In fact, with the majority of companies increasing their investment in shopper research (both custom qualitative and quantitative shopper studies as well as syndicated data) and an expanding insight resource pool at their disposal (their agencies, white papers, shopper conferences, the Hub, input from the sales and customer teams, and more) most companies are literally drowning in information and data.

Yet, speak to any retailer or read any industry survey and the number-one area of optimization that retailers are seeking from manufacturers regarding shopper marketing is consistently “more insights-based programs and recommendations”

So where’s the disconnect for shopper marketers? We’ve got plenty of water (shopper research and data) but we’re not making it drinkable (turning it into relevant and actionable insights) for retailers and their shoppers. As a result, they’re left thirsty and wanting for more. Why, after collecting such rich and useful information, are marketers so often paralyzed by it and, based on the feedback from retailers, unable to translate it effectively to the shopper and the store?

Based on my experience, most organizations are lacking what I’ll call an insights framework for shopper marketing. An insights framework is a unifying methodology for how a company can structure and organize an approach to insights so that they can positively impact shopper behavior.

A good framework will: a) inform the scope and scale of shopper research a marketer should gather or invest in (what do we really want to learn?); b) filter or classify the learning into an approach that makes it actionable (how will we integrate into our shopper programming?); and c) create a common language or process for the organization that will simplify and codify an approach to shopper marketing (are we all on the same page?). Importantly, it must also be accessible and understood by the entire organization.

A well-known example of an insights framework is Procter & Gamble’s “store back/store first” approach. It establishes a singular way that Procter thinks about and applies insights: It starts at the shelf and works backwards, aligning all their shopper initiatives around a common goal of impacting the end-point of the shopper decision process at the shelf. It informs both what Procter & Gamble wants to learn about their shopper and how they’re going to apply it.

Some are using the shopper path-to-purchase as their insights framework. Unfortunately, one of the more disconcerting trends of the past few years has been the misappropriation of path-to-purchase models. Far too often, we’re seeing path-to-purchase models employed simply as tools to classify and categorize shopper media-mix and tactics.

Typically in these scenarios, path-to-purchase is used to align potential shopper communication touchpoints along each step of the way (see chart one). This is a “back-end” application of the path-to-purchase model since it primarily focuses on tactics and not strategy. It doesn’t fully leverage how marketers should be thinking about path-to-purchase or how to apply the model.

Now, contrast that with applying path-to-purchase as an insights framework. The same path-to-purchase model can be used to align strategic shopper insights that would impact our shopper behaviorally, not tactically, along their shopping journey (see chart two).

Rather than a “back-end” application, we’re now using path-to-purchase as a “front-end” framework for insight alignment. This way, it can drive strategy rather than tactics and provide a structure to organize, align, and apply shopper insights. All that raw shopper data and information can be aligned to formulate insights around each step in the shopper’s path-to-purchase. Because shopper path-to-purchase is, by definition, a behavioral model, it provides a solid framework in which to apply insights to programming.

This path-to-purchase framework can be used to structure a shopper-insights learning plan that will help us understand how the shopper interacts with our brand or category and the impediments or barriers she may encounter along each step of her path-to-purchase.

Specifically, we should plan our research to study our shopper at each step — aware/attract/engage/motivate/purchase — to identify how the decision making during that step impacts the purchase. Think about how powerful your research will be with that type of focus.

Let’s look at three examples of how using a path-to-purchase framework can help turn insights into opportunities.

Attract Insight: Eggs are an important ingredient for baking and meal preparation. In most grocery or mass shopping trips, baking and meal preparation decisions occur while the shopper is in the store’s center aisles. Eggs, however, are typically found on the store perimeter and, for obvious reasons, are usually one of the last items put into a shopping basket.

By the time our shopper gets to the egg aisle, she’s probably passed 8-10 baking and meal preparation purchase opportunites that could have included eggs. What would the impact on the shopper be if we had called out the benefits of using eggs to make pancakes or a freshly baked cake while the shopper was actually navigating those aisles? Could we have prompted an incremental purchase of flour or sugar and reminded our shopper to put extra eggs in the basket when she got to the store perimeter? I’ll bet egg producers and grocery retailers would like to know.

Engage Insight: When I was working with a leading beef producer, one of our goals was to create a premium-beef brand for retail. While most consumers have some awareness of premium-beef breeds (a la Kobe steaks) or specialty brands (Omaha Steaks), there is no everyday, national premium-beef brand available at the major retail channels similar to Perdue or Tyson chicken. This represented a major opportunity, not only for the beef producer but also for the retailer, because research validated that shoppers who put a beef product in their basket had the highest basket-ring of any shopper segment in the store.

The key to understanding this oportunity was to look at the “engage” stage in the path-to-purchase: What role or solution does the category fill for our shopper? While beef has typically been merchandised around functional discriminators such as price-per-pound and type of cut, what we discovered was that beef purchasing and consumption also carried a huge emotional connection for shoppers.

The category itself was tightly related to a mom’s sense of self-esteem and validation of being a good “meal provider” for her family. This insight created the ideal platform for building a premium-beef brand based on emotional values. The producer and retailer could then work together to create a shopper-engagement strategy at the shelf that built premium equity and created an emotional connection via new packaging, in-store communication and merchandising.

Motivate Insight: Adult incontinence products play a vital role in helping seniors maintain an active and vibrant lifestyle. However, despite the obvious benefits of the product, the motivation to purchase is often derailed at the shelf due to shopper concerns about discretion: sufferers don’t want to “reveal” themselves in a public shopping location. So, despite all the great work that might have been done to move the shopper along the aware/attract/engage continuum, our shopper’s path-to-purchase often comes to a grinding halt at the shelf.

What insight might help us alleviate this motivation barrier and enable the purchase? Should the incontinence aisle be moved to the front of the store closer to check-out? How about a bag or cover available at the shelf which enables the shopper to cover the package when it’s put into the basket and affords greater shopper discretion? Align your insights around this step in the path-to-purchase and the answer should become clear.

The next time you embark on your quest for more shopper insights, remember the tale of our intrepid sailors. Being surrounded by water isn’t a benefit unless you can drink it. Employ path-to-purchase as a front-end framework for aligning insights to shopper behavior (rather than as a back-end media planning tool) and you can make your insights more actionable and convert more shoppers into buyers.