Case Study
Driving Retailer Conversion by Understanding Category Shoppers
overview
Based on our category and shopper expertise, as well as a long history of partnership, a beverage client came to C+R with a research request related to one of their key retail partners. Research had been conducted a few years prior, but the client wanted to update the findings and take the research to the next level to help drive category growth. C+R developed a quantitative study utilizing our Illuminator™ Shopper Solution to uncover key insights and accelerate growth.
THE PROBLEM
Pinpointing Awareness and Conversion Issues at a Key Retailer
A longtime C+R client in the beverage industry came to us with a set of research questions. Their primary focus? Pinpointing awareness and conversion issues at a key retailer. Beyond that, they hoped to identify opportunities, barriers, and perceptions of their category at that particular retailer. Given that the category was only available in 19 states and there were four different store formats across those states, each with its own nuances, the team knew it would be important to understand if state and/or store format played a role in consumers’ shopping behaviors at the retailer.
OUR APPROACH
Consumer Perspectives + Consumer Behavior: A Perfect Marriage
The C+R team designed a quantitative study using C+R’s Illuminator™ Shopper Solution. Specifically, the team utilized Numerator’s Omnipanel to identify consumers who had purchased the category at least two times in the past six months and made a purchase at the retailer in the past three months (any category). With this information, consumers were then divided into two groups: those who made at least one of their category purchases at the retailer in the past six months and those who made their category purchases elsewhere.
Next, we deployed a mobile-friendly survey (tailored to each purchaser type) to assess:
- awareness of the category at the retailer;
- perceptions of the category at the retailer;
- drivers of purchasing the category; and
- barriers to purchasing from the retailer.
Demographic and category spend data were used to profile shopper types and identify potential opportunities for the retailer to shift spend away from competitive retailers and channels. Results were analyzed by shopper type and store format (and in cases where sample sizes permitted, by state).
The result
A New Category and Brand Strategy
Our research identified several ways to improve the category at the retailer – including methods for enhancing the category for those who were already purchasing it at the retailer, along with approaches for attracting more purchasers among those who were shopping for other categories in the store. The client used the results of our research to work with their retail partner on a category and brand strategy.
Bonus! The client originally intended to conduct shop-alongs with consumers, but our other methods uncovered the types of opportunities they were most interested in, so we were able to cut shop-alongs from the budget, saving our client valuable research dollars.
A few of the key opportunities our research uncovered:
- Increase the prominence of the category including greater signage, as visuals are key in triggering purchases.
- Explore changing the store format to be more conducive to the category and make the category more noticeable to shoppers.
- Fend off out-of-stock concerns by restocking fast sellers more regularly.
- Determine ways to make prices more competitive.
Learn more about how C+R leverages our IlluminatorTM solutions to provide clients with behavioral and attitudinal consumer data. Our solutions marry C+R Research’s qualitative and quantitative expertise with actual behavioral data collected from millions of shopping receipts.
proven experience
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