Archive for the ‘shopper insights’ Category

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

About a year ago, I described how smartphone apps could change the face of grocery shopping.  I had been converted by Grocery Gadgets.  It organized my planning and list making; it guided my trip through the store.  I was focused.  The experience was great.  I was a more efficient shopper.

Well, I have been using Grocery Gadgets for about a year.  I finally came up for air and looked at my fellow shoppers.  During all of that time, I have yet to see a single individual using a smartphone while grocery shopping.  Not a one.  What’s going on?  Where is the predicted mobile commerce revolution in the grocery store?

One answer, is that there are people out there going up and down the supermarket aisles guided by their smartphones and I just haven’t noticed them.  It is also possible that the transition will take a bit more time.  But, the mobile commerce experience, at least in the grocery store, still may be a work in process.

• Grocery Gadgets is a very elaborate shopping list.  So are other grocery shopping apps.  Even apps from the stores themselves are shopping lists connected to an electronic version of the weekly circular.  Simply moving material from one medium to another is rarely successful.  Something from the original medium is lost.  What is simpler than a list on the back of an envelope stuck to the refrigerator door?  And, it fails to take advantage of the strengths of the new medium.  Reading the local newspaper on my smartphone was never very satisfying, but reading stories related to topics in which I am interested aggregated by Google News is fantastic.
• There is no feedback.  The communication is all one way.  I create a list, I select the items, and I check them off.  Increasingly, consumers expect a sense of community in their mobile shopping experience.  If I create a list of grocery items for my trip to the store, I should be able to see my friends who like the same things, and the store should tell me which of those items are on sale.  Or, it should suggest alternatives that are on sale.
• Think about your grocery shopping.  When you are in the store, what are the questions you have?  Where is an item…or an aisle?  What’s on sale?  What flavor does my family really like?  Which cut looks better?  Which melon seems fresher?  Is a 20 oz. bottle at $1.50 a better deal than a 12 oz. one at a $1?  My grocery app cannot answer any of these questions.  So, it is disconnected from my real in-store experience.  To respond to my real needs in the moment, the store will need to be aware of me and my smartphone.  And, if it can, I am likely to accept its tracking me.
• You do see people in the grocery store using their phone.  They are calling spouses and asking them to clarify something on a list or asking what they can get instead something they can’t find. They ask children what they might like.  In other words, real people use their phones in the store to be flexible.  My grocery shopping app isn’t.
• Some shoppers insist that going to the grocery store is drudgery.  But, I have talked to just as many who say a trip to the grocery store allows them to indulge themselves or their family.  They may not be able to splurge on jewelry at David Yurman, but they can treat themselves to some fancy chocolate or gourmet cheese at the grocery for just a few dollars.  Grocery Gadgets and its’ ilk make shopping more efficient.  They also need to inject some fun into the process.

I am sure there are many more ways that the mobile commerce in the grocery store can become more engaging.  Making me a more efficient shopper was great, but I want more.   I want my smartphone to create a reciprocal relationship with the store that makes it a new experience every time I enter.  At C+R, we are excited to explore what that means for you and your customers.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

When I began my career in marketing research as an interviewer, I assumed that I would be leaving my academic training behind.  Of what use would my knowledge of manuscript hands, scholastic philosophy, and Anglo-Norman devotional literature be when I was talking to ten-year-olds about the latest iteration of microwavable pizza?

So, it was with a good deal of interest that I read a recent post on the Anthrostrategist blog about the lessons to be learned from effect of the stained glass windows in gothic cathedrals for the design of retail space.  It points out that the windows of the gothic cathedral were much more than a new architectural technology.  They served to educate an illiterate congregation.  But even more, they created a sacred space that insulated the people from the tribulations of the outside world and primed them for worship.  The church itself elevated the experience.

The retail environment must do the same.  It must do more than simply draw the attention of consumers to the features and benefits of products.  The store should draw shoppers into the ethos of a product and prime them for the total experience in which a product participates.

An impressive analogy.  I am sure it is possible to get there without a knowledge of Abbé Suger, but it sure helps.  So, I remember the first time I realized my academic training was not useless.  I was behind the mirror in a focus group facility listening to a brand manager rail about the stupidity of the consumers I had just interviewed.  They refused to recognize the benefits of his new product — qualities he felt were obvious and should be manifest to everyone.

With a certain degree of temerity — I was rather new then — I suggested that my respondents were merely looking in all honesty for what they saw as the benefits in the product.  They were not willfully ignorant.  In the back of my mind was a vague recollection of St. Augustine’s stricture about sin, that people are not really evil.  Rather, “all people seek the good.”

The lesson in all of this is larger than the utility of gothic architecture or medieval philosophy to understanding shopper behavior.  Insights, or at least the ability to perceive them in consumer actions and statements, are often the product of our ability to bring a new frame of reference to bear upon familiar evidence.

It is not simply academic pursuits that can be useful.  To be sure, what you may have learned studying history, or geology, or French literature can provide you with a set of mental frameworks that will compliment what you have learned studying marketing.  But, so too will the experience creating schedules for Little League, coordinating a Girl Scout Cookie sale, or organizing your MP3 collection.  The more structures we have in our mental quiver to layover what we observe, the richer the insights we will see.

By Steve Stallard, Senior Vice President

“Pure” ethnographic observation can be so telling.  It strips away the noise and clutter from what’s really going on.  I love the example of “Muffler Shop Clarity.”  One of our ethnographers sat in the shop waiting room to understand and get to the bottom of customer annoyances.  Early in the process, she noted that the inability of customers to see their cars and the progress being made was a source of ever increasing anxiety.  That was the major problem.  Putting in windows in the waiting rooms was an easy fix.

So much can be learned from simple customer observation, but, with so many customers, observing them all is impossible.  So, in situations where it’s possible we often seek volunteered feedback from customers.

Point-of-Sale feedback (“volunteerism”) has been employed for ages in the form of customer guest cards and 800 call-in numbers on receipts (now replaced by the ubiquitous website address).  I’ve even come across a rather egregious example that required the customer to use his or her own stamp to mail in the survey!  To be sure, POS data collection has been altered by mobile technology, yet it still depends of the voluntary good will of the customer to generate responses (leaving incentives out of the equation).

Much of the excitement over mobile research focuses on the recency of a sales or service evaluation and the instantaneous results.  What seems to be overlooked in these discussion is the evident engagement of consumers with their mobile devices that inspires a level of volunteerism not seen before.  And, what does this do for us?  It increases base sizes (increasing not just the “delighteds” or the “discontenteds” as with other modes), and makes more complete and more representative results.  More than that, the customer engagement with their mobile device produces more thoughtful responses.

Today, a mobile phone is like our keys.  It is always with us.  And, if it’s not, you know exactly where it is.…OK, my wife may not always.  The point is, we like our mobile phones, they are personal to us.  And, it’s that “person-ability” that makes us honest and frank when we respond with them.

So when we can’t observe all our customers or we can’t do a census of them to improve our products or service delivery, we can get more with mobile technology and, the results takes us farther than we previously could with the POS “moment-of-truth.”

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Shopper Insights has proven to be an incredibly valuable construct.  It moves the focus of marketing and of research much closer to the actual decision and purchase.  It is real.  We are not asking consumers (a rather vague and distant term in its own right) in a vacuum how an ad makes them feel about a product.   We are in a store with a real shopper; we observe how a real shelf set of products impacts her decisions.

At the risk of injecting some un-reality back into the process, just who precisely is this shopper in shopper insights?  Well, it’s the person in the store doing the shopping.  D’uh!

Not so fast.

Consider three “shoppers” in a grocery store.

• The first is there making her weekly trip to replenish the pantry and prepare for the upcoming week.  She is a bit harried.  She has a list, although it might have some wiggle room in it.  She may even have a few coupons.  She quickly glances across the condiment section looking at the yellow mustard.  What’s on sale?  Does her family really care what brand it is?  How much should she buy?
• Our second shopper is planning a party for the weekend.  She will be serving a buffet with ham.  She too is gazing at the condiment section, but much more slowly.  How many kinds of mustard should she get to satisfy her guests?  Which mustards look interesting?  Are there mustards that will make the table more impressive?
• Finally, we have the shopper who rushes up to the condiment section and grabs a small jar of Dijon mustard from the shelf.  She wants to make a salad dressing tonight, and she has run out of an essential ingredient.

In each case, we have a shopper looking at the same section of the grocery store, scanning the same array of products.  But, each is sensitive and attentive to different cues.  Each has different needs.  The interplay of these needs and cues drives markedly different decisions.

Of course, these are not three different shoppers. It’s the same person visiting the same store, but driven by a different set of situational considerations.  But, from the perspective of the store trying to satisfy her, she is fundamentally three different people.  It is the situation, not something in her tastes and character, that conditions her decision making.

For many years, our restaurant research has been shaped by this fundamental insight — it is the occasion more than the individual that drives decision making. I may go to the same restaurant with my family that I do with a group of friends. But I do so for very different reasons with very different expectations.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

It is sobering to read in the space of a few weeks that Kodak is on the verge of declaring bankruptcy and that Sears will be shuttering over a hundred stores.  These are brands with which baby boomers grew up.  They stood for values many held dear — “preserving memories” in the case of Kodak and “value for the entire family” in the case of Sears.

The names, of course, are not completely dead.  In fact, I still have more contact with them than I do with some other brands.  My daughter-in-law continually sends me “Kodak Galleries” of my grandchildren.  And, I have a niece who works in a Sears.  Although, I suppose it is telling that I didn’t mention purchasing Kodak products or shopping at a Sears.

The easy answer, and the one you have all heard, is that both of these brands could not adapt to changing competition.  Like the proverbial supertanker, they were difficult to change quickly and sharply.  The transition from film-based to digital photography may have been inevitable, but Kodak played a role in the development of the digital camera.

So how do marketers keep their brands healthy?  How do they assure they do not find themselves on the wrong side of changes in the marketplace?

• A brand is the glue that binds a consumer to a product.  It is the basis of loyalty and identity.  And, it tells the consumer what a product is not, who does not belong to its family, as much as it defines what the product is.  That “what it’s not” extends beyond its immediate competition.  McDonald’s kept its brand healthy by recognizing it is was more than simply “not Burger King.”  It was “not a sit-down restaurant.”  And, that meant it competed with Starbuck’s for snack occasions.  What is Burger King “not”?
• The wrong answer to the question of what a brand is “not” is “trying to be all things to all people.”  It may work for a while, but, as Sears has learned, a weak focus can make you vulnerable.  When Sears truly dominated a large swath of mass retailing, all was well.  But, over time, more focused competitors — some big, some small, some physical, some catalogues — chipped away at the margins.  In the end, there are a number of players doing a better job of being pieces of “not Sears.”

So, the successful marketer must keep a careful eye on what is outside of the brand’s preserve, far outside.  One way is to keep monitoring social media.  The tendency is to pay attention to what is being said about “my brand.”  But, the real goal has to be paying attention to what my brand’s users are saying about all of their consumption.  What products, services, activities are poaching on the emotional ties that used to be exclusively the domain of my brand?  More to the point, what is replacing those emotional ties?

Another more focused approach to this monitoring is with on-line communities of your brand loyalists.  This effort still can have a very broad outlook, but it also allows for probing into specific behavior and attitudes.  I suspect it was not simply the birth of digital photography that changed the world for Kodak.  It was also the different vision of friendship and relationships that Gen-Xers display, a vision that set great store in broad but immediate sharing of experiences.  On-line communities are great places for exploring these changing social constructs.

By Darren Breese, Research Director

With all the talk of new technologies and the like in the air, we may overlook the basics.  Yet, one of the themes running through the recent Market Research Event was the notion of simply empathizing with consumers.  This is nothing new of course; it is the core of what we do every day — understand consumers, bring them to life, connect them to marketers.  Every day we put ourselves in the consumer’s shoes, or in some cases actually watching them put on their shoes.

Sometimes it is hard for clients to truly empathize with their consumers, because quite often they aren’t in the same boat.  They may be more affluent, live different lifestyles, and have upbrings and life experiences that are poles apart.  Despite all of the differences — perhaps because of them — it is the researcher’s job to do as much as to connect marketers and their consumers, and to do this in a way that makes the experience as engaging as possible.

A technique used successfully by one researcher at the conference was to force marketers to consume as their consumer does.

• Shop on a strict budget (like many of their customers).
• Shop with children in tow, even if that means “borrowing” kids for a day.
• Immerse  marketers with triads of like-minded consumers
• Engage in other non-shopping activities common to the target consumers.
• And, of course, keep journals to drive their immersion home.

We know and do Immersion extremely well, but Immersion research only works as well as the client wants it to, so we have to constantly look for way to keep things fresh and fun.

Another way insight managers are using empathy is bringing together cross-functional teams.  We all know how different right- and left-brained individuals think and process information.  It can be extremely difficult for them all to difficult to work on the same page.  By placing cross-functional teams together in the same room with consumers, and holding immersion sessions that help each team member empathize with their consumers, an insights manager got his team to think similarly—like their consumer.  He was then able to hold Ideation sessions that led to productive concept development work.

In other words, walking in someone else’s shoes has the added benefit of forcing marketers to take of their own.

As we strive to provide marketers with actionable insights and help them connect with their consumers, we must also be consistently looking for new and innovative ways to help them foster empathy for their consumers.  Empathy makes insights real.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

A little while ago I noted that technology, principally Smartphone technology, was changing the way we interacted with brick-and-mortar stores.  Technology is altering the shopping experience and, consequently, the discipline of shopper insights.  I am back with more evidence.

Recent research has asked the question, “Why do consumers ‘friend’ companies on Facebook?”  A good question.  The answer is obvious; they do it to get deals and offers.  They do it because they are customers. Are brands buying love?  We will see.  But, buried in the data was an interesting tidbit.  23% of those surveyed had downloaded a brand-specific App to their Smartphones.

Apps are another way to get offers, but they have another feature — a store finder — that can alter the way consumers shop.  I have often asked consumers, “Say you are driving down the street and you see a McDonald’s on your left and a Burger King on right.  Which do you choose and why?”

But, now, when I find myself in an unfamiliar neighborhood or on the road and the uncontrollable urge for a burger comes over me, I swipe across my Smartphone screen, hit the McDonald’s App, find the nearest Golden Arches, and head for it like a laser.  No scanning the signs, no getting waylaid by a Burger King.  I am there.

When I want a cup of coffee, I do the same thing.  I tap on the Starbuck’s App, and I am there.

These Apps are that nirvana of marketers, something that short circuits the consumer’s normal behavior and puts a single brand squarely before her eyes to the exclusion of all others.  In the future, I may have to ask consumers, “Say you are looking at (driving down?) your Smartphone screen and you see Apps for McDonald’s and Burger King.  Which do you tap?” This example is hypothetical as there appears to be no Burger King App at the moment.

Another way that Smartphones can alter the shopping experience is by blurring the line between on-line and off-line.  Tesco has driven up sales at its Home Plus stores in South Korea by plastering the walls of subway stations with full-size representations of grocery store aisles. Each item is accompanied by a QR code.  All busy commuters have to do is scan the items they want with the Home Plus App on their Smartphones, and it is delivered to their home that day.  Is this on-line shopping? Is it brick-and-mortar shopping?  Thanks to the Smartphone, Tesco has converted bricks-and-mortar to paper-and-paste.

Shopping in the future is going to be very interesting and exceptionally varied.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Two weeks ago I added the Grocery Gadgets app to my iPhone. Being compulsive, I also added it to my iPad. It lets me build a shopping list from a database of my favorite items. As I walk through the store, I check the items off as I pull them from the shelves. Being doubly compulsive, I created a group that lets my wife and I add items to the list from our computers or mobile devices.

While I am really enamored with this new system, Heather is less convinced. Isn’t this just a high tech version of what used to be on the back of an envelope? Maybe. But, wait. I can link the list to a particular store. As I walk through the store, the app remembers the order in which I selected the items on the list. The next time I go to that store, bang, the items come up as I walk up to them!

The app has become my store. No more dawdling over end-caps. No more serendipitous discoveries as I notice an attractive display of something I’ve never seen before. Instead, I discover new products because the app offers me a coupon for a new product.

This is only the beginning. An app like myShopanion lets me check what my friends have to say about something I’d like to try…while I am still in the store. I can easily imagine a future version of GroceryGadget that suggest products to me the way Amazon does or even cycles items to the top of my searches like Google.

What’s really interesting about all of this is that apps like these perform the amazing feat of taking the physical store out of the shopper interaction. The customer becomes their customer, and the store becomes just the middleman. For brands, this could be huge: a direct channel to customers without the hassle of dealing with a gazillion different in-store configurations.