Shopper Culture

What We Say vs. How We Shop

A while ago, we recounted the story of how a simple divider in a shopping cart can radically change shopping behavior. In fact, the little sign that said, "place produce here, all other products there" doubled fresh produce purchases during the experiment.

Additional secondary research by Collin Payne and Mihai Niculescu found that this was massively more effective than other produce marketing methods (shelf labeling, advertising, coupons, etc.), which often only increased sales a couple percentage points.   

But we began to wonder if such a persuasive marketing method would ever survive the standby of shopper research: the direct response survey of purchase intent. So we fielded the question to a panel of 4,593 US shoppers.

We found that a cart divider ranked last in what people claim would influence them to buy more produce.

When asked directly if a cart divider would influence their produce purchases, an overwhelming majority said it would have no effect.

If the Shopper Will Not Go to the Store, the Store Must Come to the Shopper

We all about know food trucks. Most of us have heard of grocery delivery trucks. But that is only the beginning. Imagine if a truck delivered…pretty much anything to your block! 

Feiyue is a French shoe company that is expanding globally. As a part of its expansion efforts in South Africa, Feiyue is taking its shoes to the streets of Johannesburg. Not only does the attractive appearance of the truck take you away and lure you into the store where you make an impulse purchase of a nice pair of shoes, but you can also schedule the truck to show up at your address, at home, at the park, or on campus! (Photos courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/feiyue.southafrica)

This trend goes beyond food, shoes, and goods in general. For example, there are beer canning trucks that will bring the canning equipment for your home-brewed beer. Others offer professional grade car-repair tools and equipment. The list goes on. Do you think the mobility, on-demand capacity, and flexibility paired together with the authentic and personal touch of the trucks will soon outpace online and big-box retailing?

Ikea's Timely And Cheeky Valentine's Promo

How does Ikea make furniture (and its brand) relevant on Valentine's day? Well, @DarraghDoyle spotted this smart and cheeky promotion Ikea Australia put out. 

The offer: free crib for parents whose baby is born on November 14 2013! The implication: get busy making babies today! It's been blowing up Twitter and Facebook, as well as garnering a ton of media exposure.

Bravo, Ikea, for using a simple, affordable promotion to make furniture matter on Valentine's day. It's like taking Oreo's Daily Twist and making it interactive for shoppers.

Popularity is Popping Up Everywhere

Hotels.com now features an interesting ephemeral pop-up when you view a hotel listing.

Not only do they show you the rating of the hotel and its overall popularity: they are now featuring the popularity of the hotel in the last day. 

Similarly, companies like MediaCart are building cart-mounted tablet systems that can put these kinds of messages at shoppers' fingertips. As you walk the aisles, the tablet could say, "The top-selling aspirin this week is Bayer Low Dose Baby Aspirin 200 ct."  

We are herd creatures, as Mark Earls has said for years. And one of the easiest ways to outsource our cognitive load—our decisions—is to simply do what others do (because if so many people do it, it must be good enough).

Research has found that this kind of 'social proof' is extremely persuasive. (Robert Cialdini is a leader in this work.) And the more similar the reference group is to you, the more persuasive the message is.

Amazon and Netflix are the kings of the recommendation engines. It's surprising that it's taking so long for brick & mortar retailers to catch on.

Turning Subways into Stores

In August, Tesco pioneered the use of subway platforms as virtual stores in Seoul (partly because they ran out of real estate for new stores). Chinese online supermarket Yihodian.com then installed walls in 15 subway stations in Shanghai. P&G launched a similar system in Prague with Mall.cz, the Czech Republic's largest e-tailer.

Now Sears is launching holiday toy walls in airports, movie theaters, and bus stations in the US.

One implication is that any 2D surface (outdoor, wild posting, ambient, print) can become a storefront. There's a new choice in these spaces: advertise or merchandise?

But these programs also reveal something about how humans work. Why doesn't Tesco just use that wall to say, "Shop thousands of products, right this minute, right on your phone"? Why the need to choose 200 or so SKUs and post life-size 2D depictions of them on the walls? 

Our brains need familiar schema, comfortable metaphors, and visual stimuli to spur action. It's why the email symbol is still an envelope, and why 'the red carpet' means star treatment, even if it's two meters long and not very different from the regular passenger boarding lane at Gate A18.

New Tech Players Lighting Up the Retail Space

At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), an unlikely retail player emerged. Fulton Innovation, using their eCoupled technology, showed a surprising transformation to packaged goods:

 

eCoupled is a wireless power solution. Fulton quickly realized that their technology has infinite uses: from charging devices to heating food to making your packaging more eye-catching – they created these custom-lit cereal boxes for pennies on the dollar.

As we all look for ways to make our goods pop off the shelves into people’s carts, I can see this being the next wave of in-store marketing. While it might not increase trial of familiar products (new look, same great taste), this could be a great way to attract attention to a new product – or to a product with low shelf presence. Either way it will definitely make consumers stop and take a second look.

-Contributed by Desereé DeZalia, Dallas

The Checkout: DIGITAIL® Report

Everything today has a digital component. Whether it's your own brand Web site, or your role on a customer Web site of varying flavors, plus the use of digital technologies within bricks & mortar, the worlds of digital and retail have and continue to move ever closer together. Giving rise to a new practice that we at Integer have deemed DIGITAIL®. 

 

The lastest edition of The Checkout looks at shopping behavior through the DIGITAIL® lens, and introduces the need for a new shopping mentality:

 

Scoring a deal was the number-one reason shoppers said they buy online. This isn’t surprising considering online shopping has traditionally been tied heavily to a spear-fishing mentality. When shoppers hunt for a singular item, they search for a good price, attractive shipping options, and then they buy. Categories that require hunting for multiple items at once, like Food and Beverage or Health and Beauty, need to introduce a new online buying mentality. The concept of completing standard grocery shopping online for most is still far off, and manufacturers and eTailers need to understand that there are conventions ingrained in shopper behavior that they must disrupt. And disruption calls for new value propositions supported by a superior experience from eTailers. Look for innovators like Alice.com and Soap.com to lead this charge. However, to truly create a change of serious scale, it’s going to take large eTailers like Amazon.com and Drugstore.com to offer something new.

For more DIGITAIL® data, you can click here to download the latest edition of The Checkout.

Retail on Wheels

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite TV shows, CBS Sunday Morning, had a segment on about LA’ s growing street-food culture. 

Grass-fed, free roaming beef hotdogs? Sliders on rice patties with farm-fresh cheese?  Vegan ice cream cups? It seems that, on-the-go street food has taken a turn toward gourmet.  And the response from consumers has been remarkable. So remarkable, in fact, that there is an entire Website dedicated to the Food Truck culture in L.A., N.Y., S.F. and Portland to help diners find out where their favorite meals on wheels will be next. 

Now, street food isn’t necessarily a new idea. Think about the hotdog stands in NYC and the ice cream man who came around when you were a kid. However, the way in which these visionaries are serving it up is.  They took a conventional tried-and-true way of selling food and revamped the process, by jazzing up the eats, transforming their trucks into cool machines, and keeping incredible-tasting food at a price point for the masses to partake in.  They also tapped into the viral craze of twitter, which is the perfect form of media to communicate this dynamic retail landscape that changes on a daily basis.  

What is most interesting about this shift in the food-service category is that it is just that: a shift. It is not a massive depart or a total reinvention.  It is simply a way of thinking differently by disrupting the category to create a new retail and shopping space, in this case for food.   

Can your category benefit from a simple shift in thinking? Could implementing a simple twist open up new retail channels or ways of shopping? Can manufacturers go directly to the people through different distribution channels? Can retailers expand their footprint by creating a street presence? 

It's all food for thought.

 

Save Money, Go Out in Style

Now at Walmart, you not only save money to live better, buy you can save your loved ones a little cash upon your passing. Simply have them connect to Walmart's web-site and browse a selection of 13 different caskets ranging in price from $895 to $2,899 (that one is 100% bronze with a "lush velvet interior" for added comfort.

 

Currently, these items are not sold in stores.

-Contributed by Paul Ballew

Be Good To People

In April 2009, we made a presentation at the In-Store Marketing Institute's Summit on the convergence of the retail and digital spaces. In that presentation, we made an assertion, based on the research we conduct every month on changing shopping behaviors in the U.S., that we are living in an age of conscious consumption. Conspicuous consumption is dead.

So it was interesting to see this business at a farmer's market a couple of weekends ago.

Be good to people is a small business with a big purpose. They are trying to create a movement that will make the world a better place. And it all starts with shopping or, more specifically, the purchase of apparel and lifestyle accessories that carry the mission of the business.  As the company's Web site says:

It's performing simple acts of kindness, and recognizing others for their "Good."
It's a renewed feeling of hope, relief from today's negative news.
It's joy in simple things. Returning to basic, core values.
It's communicating a shared belief, like-minded people spreading a positive message.
It's a movement.   
Changing the world, one person, one kind act, at a time.
The idea is simple.
It's black and white.

When you buy something from them, 5% of that money goes to their People Being Good to People Fund. From this fund they recognize and reward people who do good and are good to others all over the world.

Simple.

Perhaps this it is the merging of conscious and conspicuous consumption - telling the world how great you are through your shopping behavior. While the notion of using your purchasing power to do good (such as productRED™) is nothing new, this is such a simple humanistic message, a reminder to us all of basic values we should all uphold everyday, that it has the potential to be very successful. It's a great conversation-starter and a philosophy that, I hope, has few detractors. 

So sign up with them on their facebook group, pick something up, and see where that coversation takes you.

Keeping Shoppers Engaged and Interested - A New Loyalty Model?

All the stats show that loyalty and reward programs are on the rise (Colloquey Talk). Most shoppers are opting in simply to save money. (Forrester: Building Lasting Customer Loyalty). That makes sense, especially given the current state of the U.S. economy. However, is saving money enough to keep shoppers engaged and coming back for more?

I’ve come across some unique, different and creative ways brands are trying to recruit and keep shoppers engaged and, more importantly, keep them coming back. It’s a slightly different approach than the typical credit-card or loyalty-card program.

Receipt Treat – Starbucks® offers the following to all patrons who make a purchase.
 

Pick of the Week – Starbucks offers a free iTunes® download every Tuesday to all patrons.

Starbucks still uses its Starbucks Reward programs.

Free Nutritional Coaches and Nutritional Classes/Seminars From Vitamin Cottage® (a natural grocery store). No purchase necessary, no signing up, just free personalized and customized advice based on questions submitted by shoppers. 

First Drink on Us and 10% Off Food Items from Baker St. Pub & Grill®
A card handed out to nearby employees of businesses giving 10% off all food items and the first drink for free at all of their upcoming visits. No signup required. No expiration date.

These different approaches suggest the following:

#1 – Brands are relinquishing some of their control over shoppers. No required shopper information is needed to engage and interact with the brand in the above examples.

#2 – These retailers are giving value-added perks to all of their shoppers, not just to those perceived to be the most profitable. This flips the traditional CRM model on its head. Equality to all shoppers, not just to a select few.

#3 – These examples provide more ways for shoppers to benefit from a brand relationship versus just saving money on products. These acts by brands actually provide more value to shoppers, raise brand opinion, increase brand loyalty, increase store visits, and ultimately increase purchase amount and frequency.

A New Model?
At its very basic definition, the model of a traditional CRM/loyalty program is to determine how the brand can leverage shoppers in its database to its own advantage – in other words to maximize the brand’s profits. The above examples suggest the makings of a flipped model where shoppers benefit by receiving the most personally relevant value from the brand.

This leaves me pondering still more questions. What do you think?
•    How should brands determine what constitutes the strength of the relationship with shoppers, outside of financial profitability? What are these behaviors? Purchase, Web visits, downloads, posts about their brand on blogs, etc.?
•    Which model is the right model?
•    Should different models be used in different economic situations?
•    Is there any value in practicing both models simultaneously?
•    Should brands think about the strength of a relationship with shoppers vs. how profitable a shopper can be to them? Long term vs. short term?
•    What forms of value (other than savings and discounts) can brands give shoppers that are meaningful and relevant? That cost the brand little to no money?

Products Tease New Products

Purex fabric softeners uses its own product to pre-launch a new product.  

In the detergent aisle at King Soopers, I found an interesting neckhanger. I did a double take because the communication on Purex fabric softener announced the arrival of a new product. "Coming Soon! Introducing the all in one laundry solution." It's for Purex Complete 3-in-1 Laundry Sheets.

I haven't seen this idea done, at least not in-store. There are two interesting things about this. 

1) The communication uses a shopper's current purchase journey to announce a new product in the aisle where the shopper is considering and finding the detergent she wants. 

2) The communication idea is borrowed from coming movie attractions, COMING SOON. The product isn't even in-store, yet it builds some excitement and anticipation to go looking for it in the detergent aisle the next time she needs to stock up. 

Great idea. I even went to the Web site. It was simple. Purex.com, the main brand's home page, not a 3-in-1 or some other microsite, but the brand's home page. There were several great things about the Web site too.

 

1) This launch/prelaunch is front and center on the home page. There's no missing it.

2) It provides a great online product demonstration.

3) It offers easy navigation, product information, lots of ways to learn more, and easy buttons to find a store.

Nice job Purex; especially using a shopper's current buying/decision-making behaviors to talk about new products. What are other products that tease other new product launches?

Disruptive Wearable Technology

Fascinating TED talk from Pattie Maes who works at the MIT Media Lab's new Fluid Interfaces Group. This group is doing a lot of research looking at the tools we use to work with information and connect with others. Taking off-the-shelf IT and communication components her team has developed an amazing and Disruptive way to access information and augment the reality around us. What they are calling the development of a Sixth Sense. It looks intuitive and simple.

The application to marketers and retailers is obvious and exciting. So do you think this is how we will all be enhancing our shopping behavior in the near future?

- Thanks to Priyanka Sah

In-Store Marketing Institute Summit

The In-Store Marketing Summit takes place in Chicago next week, April 1-3, 2009. The Integer Group will be presenting a new body of work at the event. 

Our Denver office will be presenting some of its recent research and thinking surrounding our Digitail™ practice. The session is entitled "The Convergence of the Digital and Retail Space: The Effect Promotions Have of Shopper Behavior" and it takes place on April 2nd, 2009 at 1:30pm and runs for an hour.

If you are going to be in Chicago then do please drop by, catch the presentation and say hello. The In-Store Marketing Institute still has some places at the Summit, so if you are still thinking about attending then get in touch with them.

Sampling By Surprise

As America pushes through tough economic times, companies are searching for interesting ways to promote their products and drive people to retail. One promotion method is sampling. Sampling has become very expensive but is key to marketers who are looking to maximize results. It’s one of the best  ways to generate trial and encourage purchase. Sampling provides the consumer with an immediate experience with the product. More and more, companies are aiming to get samples to consumers in unexpected places, a sampling-by-surprise approach. They aim to be unique and create brand recognition. Could this be a new way to disrupt and intrigue the audience?

A great example of sampling by surprise occurred recently with the premiere of the film “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Ginnifer Goodwin’s character is at the home of a guy she likes; she ends up getting 
nervous and walks into his bathroom. There, she finds and applies Crest® Whitestrips®. At the conclusion of the film, in five major markets, there were Crest brand reps standing at the exits handing out samples of Crest Whitestrips Advanced Seal™. In all, they handed out 200,000 promotional cards, which consisted of upper and lower strips, a $10 coupon, and a funny message linked to the film, such as “Ensure he is into your smile.” The cards enabled people to try the new product for free and the coupons were a great way to drive customers to retail.