Shopper Culture

Understanding Shoppers Around the Globe; An Integer Presentation

The Path to Purchase Institute's Shopper Marketing Summit wrapped yesterday in Schaumburg, IL. Integer's own Craig Elston was one of many speakers at the conference. Click HERE to download his presentation on Shoppers Around the Globe: The Impact of Culture and Context. The presentation explores insights from Integer's original shopper study conducted across five global markets—the U.S., India, the Nordics, the Middle East and Canada—including key global shopper similarities that allow for global efficiencies as well as how differences in shopper attitudes and behaviors are vital for developing effective shopper marketing programs.

Click HERE to visit Shopper Culture's presentation hub and explore other conference presentations.

The Checkout: Holiday Issue

The holiday shopping landscape continues to evolve. Department stores are giving way to mass merchants, brick-and-mortar shopping is colliding with online shopping, and Black Friday is becoming a multiday sales event. With so many choices, shoppers are able to shop the way they want during the holidays. Online, in store, browsing, or hustling, with coupons or without, there is an experience for every type of shopper. This holiday season, Hispanic shoppers opt for more experiential shopping. While the general market continues to embrace time-saving holiday shopping methods like online shopping, Hispanic shoppers venture in store with family and friends to partake in the holiday spirit.

Download the 2012 Holiday Checkout to learn more about when and where Hispanic shoppers shop during the holidays. This issue also digs in to the growing attraction of mass merchants during the holidays as well as holiday shopping preferences of groups including youth and female shoppers.

Click here to download.

Open Sell, A New Trend in Retailing

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that Clinique, a top cosmetics brand, has revised its in-store selling strategy. The brand changed from a high-service, pressure-selling approach to a softer, hands-on approach that lets the shopper play. This new type of shopping environment is known as an “open-sell” environment. This approach was made popular by Sephora, the specialty beauty chain whose hands-on product displays attract a lot of shoppers seeking experiential play with products. Clinique now displays its products in open shelves and drawers for people to interact with rather than being stocked behind the counter. This allows shoppers to easily pick products up, sample, and help themselves. 

Memorial Day Weekend: Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Shoppers

Memorial Day is devoted to the men and women who died serving our nation. It also represents the beginning of the summer travel season, and this year, 34.8 million people plan to travel 50 miles or more away from their home over the long weekend. Also during this time, shoppers start to change their focus toward family trips, social outdoor activities, and purchasing summer essentials.

Memorial Day weekend is a social time, and marketers should take note, because it affects shopper behavior. According to The Checkout’s 2011 summer survey, 82% of shoppers indicated that their main source for gathering summer activity information is from friends and family. Therefore, this is the time to start marketing campaigns that generate buzz and create shopper engagement. To do so, marketers may consider using digital and social marketing to create shopper connections. Part 3 of the study, Untangling the Social Web, by The Integer Group and The North American CCRRC, reports that shoppers are using the social web to not only engage with brands and retailers but also learn about and discover new products, services, and experiences.

Though travel and socializing are a focus for shoppers during Memorial Day weekend, price is still an important consideration. In fact, it's the most important consideration for shoppers when they plan summer activities (The Checkout’s 2011 summer survey). Keep your eyes peeled this weekend for interesting retail and brand executions that engage shoppers in conversation, ignite the summer spirit, and provide cost-effective solutions.

Contributed by Kim Chatman, Marketing Research Analyst, Integer Denver

Tales from Russia - Pride and Consumption

There it was, the new fragrence by Dior^® seen everywhere on the streets, in magazines, and plastered on the side of buildings. It was displayed proudly on the living-room armoire. Still in its box, it sat there like a beaming gold status symbol for anyone entering the room to see. While in Moscow, we visited a woman who took great pride in everything she purchased. From a store full of cosmetics stored in the refrigerator and drawers, to a lineup of body care displayed in the entry way, to that bottle of fragrance proudly sitting in the living room, she took great pride in the items she purchased and wanted the world to see them. This woman, like many others we visited, related products and name brands to social status. Much like her desire to have a larger home, move to a more affluent part of the city, and entertain more friends, she related health and beauty products to being successful and took great pride in her accomplishments.

How can everyday brands use marketing and branding along with packaging that elevates the product to being displayed on the living-room shelf? Beyond the transaction and usage, what other factors are playing a major role in emerging-markets consumption behaviors?

Click here to download the Tales From Russia study.

-Contributed by Stephen Moon

 

Tales from Russia - Which is Better, Imported or Domestic?

“For so long, everything coming out of Russia was corrupt.” This was a quote from a lady we spent time with 
in Moscow. While shopping with her for her everyday health and beauty products, we noticed that everything she was putting into her basket was all U.S. and European. This seemed to be a common theme with consumers and shoppers during our stay in Russia. Their homes, lives, and culture were surrounded by the same name-brand products we are accustomed to in the Western world. From home care to beauty, people everywhere preferred imports to domestic and had their own secret ways of finding out where a product was made. But do their aspirations of purchasing imported products match their financial constraints? How do they find the country of origin on packaging while shopping? How should Western brands change communication and superiority messaging in emerging markets? 

Click here to download the Tales From Russia study.

-Contributed by Stephen Moon

 

 

How do Mindsets Change During a Shopping Trip?

Where along a shopper's path should a kiosk like this one go?

Observational research shows that shoppers change their behaviors during a single shopping trip in some interesting ways:

1. As people spend more time in the store, they become more purposeful, less likely to explore, and more likely to grab their familiar products.

2. After getting "virtue" categories (essentials), shoppers are more likely to head over to locations that carry "vice" categories (indulgences).

So even in a single trip type or purchase occasion, shoppers can go through several mindsets. (These results are from analysis of PathTracker data of 1,200 completed shopping trips in supermarkets in the Eastern US.)

How might these behaviors impact your in-store strategies? Maybe a new product launch should be placed near the front of the shopper's path. Maybe candy and small cosmetics would do better near checkout than razors and dental floss. Maybe retailers should reconfigure stores to funnel shoppers towards virtues first and vices later.

And a kiosk like the one above?  Well, would you want to start surfing natural products when the frozen foods are melting in your cart?

If you're into hierarchical Bayesian models, read the full paper: Hui, Bradlow & Fader (2009) Journal of Consumer Research 36:479-493.

Presentation from Spark 7, 'Turning Shoppers into Buyers'

A few weeks ago in Dublin, at Spark 7, 'Turning Shoppers into Buyers', Craig Elston from the Integer Group presented leading thinking on US Shopper Marketing. 

The presentation centered around four of Integer's Shopper Marketing Tenets.

1. Understand the audience
2. Create consistent, ongoing shopper dialogue
3. Deliver innovation at retail
4. Sell today, brand always

Click here to download the presentation.

Come Curious. Leave Inspired.

That's the title of the In-Store Marketing Expo that takes place October 6 through October 8 in Chicago. This year, The Integer Group®, in conjunction with our sister Omnicom agency M/A/R/C® Research, will present a new body of work.

Our Denver office will present with M/A/R/C an update of our ongoing research that helps us understand the changing nature of the shopper. The session is titled "The Changing World of Shopping Behavior" and runs for an hour, starting at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 8.

Some of the data has been published in The Checkout this year, but our research delves a lot deeper than we are able to publish in a regular newsletter, so there will be greater depth and analysis on a number of different topics.

If you will be in Chicago, please drop by, catch the presentation, and say hello.

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?

Changing Shopper Behaviors

A number of posts on our blog and recent articles in the press discuss trying to make sense of the changing nature of shopping in the current economic climate. To help with the conversation, we have set up a continuous study in the U.S.A. that seeks to shed some light and to track over time some of the questions on our minds. We hope to expand this into other markets for comparative purposes in the near future.

It's our intention to publish a lot of this work here on a regular basis, so stay tuned and please join in the conversation.

Buy then fly, provides bright spot

In all the doom and gloom around at the moment, there is inevitably a silver lining or two. One of those is shown in a new report by Verdict research in the UK that states that global spending at airport retailers has doubled between 2002 and 2007. As a market it now accounts for US $27.1bn in spending. The report points out that passenger numbers are still growing in air travel in spite of the difficulty many airlines are experiencing due to the credit crunch and other economic factors. In fact Verdict are anticipating an 11% increase in 2008 taking spending to over US $30bn.

Europe accounts for 40% of that spend, with strong growth expected from the Middle East (currently 12%, growing to 14.5% by 2012) and China (expecting to see a doubling of sales to US$612m in the next 5 years).

Yet the continuing credit crisis and the expected yo-yoing of oil prices in the near future could easily put paid to that buoyancy of these shopper havens.

And this all begs the question as to why this area of the retail sector should be performing well. What is it about going on holiday or just walking through an airport that has us reaching for our wallets and purses? Is it a rational thing, all factored into the cost of our trip so no need to cut it back? Or is it more emotional, about the possibilities of the journey we are about to embark upon and the thrill that can deliver which makes us succumb? Why are we still spending at airports?

Muse & the Master

Shopping used to be the great American pastime, and a cure-all for economic woes — remember the president’s call to action after 9/11 and those recent stimulus checks? But with the current problems on Wall Street and Main Street, how do you communicate with wary shoppers? It’s key to move beyond what your brand or product is all about and consider how motivations for shopping have evolved.

Read more on the latest Shopper Pulse from our Integer Midwest office here.

Inconvenience

We've a project going on in the Denver office on the notion of convenience. So this little blog has been set up by Paul to discuss the opposite - those things that inconvenience and bug the hell out of us.  He's looking for comment and stories about things that get on your nerves and you see as inconvenient in your day-to-day life. We thought we'd enlist our Shopper Culture readership to contribute the things that you all find inconvenient in your day-to-day life as we're sure there is a lot!

So please have a look and leave your own story of things that are not convenient to you somewhere on the blog, or feel free to email Paul to add to his collection of stories. If you also find your way to pass this on to other people you know get riled up by life's little inconveniences, that would be fantastic.

Thanks

Point De Ventre - Paris

Paris recently hosted a Retail Marketing event called Point De Ventre. Ian Whitney from our Paris office went along, shot some video and made a quick presentation of some of the innovative technology that delivers meaningful shopper engagement. 

Great sign-off Ian!