Shopper Culture

Searching for Buyers

 Consumers are showing signs of spending their money again, although the economic downturn will likely have lasting effects on consumer spending habits. A recent PriceGrabber.com Consumer Behavior Report indicates that consumers are changing their mindsets from cutting back to spending cautiously and will not go back to previous extravagant spending habits. When shoppers decide that they're ready to buy, they often turn to the Internet, albeit clicking for very different reasons in recent months. The basic human needs of people stay the same, even during a recession. Consumers want to learn about the best products and services for their needs, and spending time online saves shoppers time and money. As a result of the tough economy, 93% of online consumers spent more time or the same amount of time shopping online. By researching products and comparing prices online, consumes boost their confidence about their product purchases. The time spent online keeps increasing because search is now habitual. There is even a special kind of consumer playing a bigger role - those who can't buy anything without first looking it up online to get the lowdown. (Re)Search is a pathway for shoppers. Search marketing is the best customer-acquisition tool in the online space.

The Internet is a bright spot across the media landscape. Despite the economic crisis, total US online ad spending is expected to rise in 2009 to a record high of $24.5 billion and continue to reach new heights each year through 2013. Online advertising can be tracked, measured, adjusted, and tightly targeted.  Today, as many consumers look for bargains or new Internet trends to emerge, words or phrases that attract more consumers can be added or modified almost immediately. 65% of online shoppers conduct product research using search engines, and the percentage of those searching before making a purchase (finding online and offline retailers) has risen. When marketers link ads to an individual’s search query, the high relevance breaks down the customary advertising resistance.  Through search advertising, shoppers find the products and the content that motivate them to buy... a path to purchase beyond the current recession.

- Contributed by Integer Media (Pam Taylor, Media Director)

Target Partners With DailyCandy

As more retailers move from brick-and-mortar to digital storefronts, retailers are looking for better ways to gain credibility with the digital audience.

During the past few years, Target has been on a mission to set itself apart from other mass retailers by bringing in internationally renowned designers such as Isaac Mizrahi, Mossimo, and more recently Alexander McQueen and Liz Lange.

Now the big-box retailer has partnered with dailycandy.com, an online insider's guide to what's new and cool in fashion, lifestyle, and culture. The venture, labeled the "Red Hot Shop," lives on target.com and features fashion picks from DailyCandy editors among some of Target’s more hip designer lines. The Red Hot Shop section of the Web site features the same artfully informal product writeups that you would see on DailyCandy.

This appears to be a smart move by Target, whose brand belief is “Design for less”. DailyCandy has just what they need to widen their consumer base and strengthen their fashion-forward equity.

But this doesn’t appear to be a one-way relationship; DailyCandy should benefit greatly from a partnership with the retail giant, who, according to Nielsen Netviews, had 21MM visitors last month alone.

What other traditional brick-and-mortar retailers will initiate joint ventures with online trendsetters in hopes of borrowing their equity and gaining credibility with online consumers?

New Presentations

There are two new presentations available for download today:

NACS Redefining the C-store: Moving from functional convenience stores to creating convenience stores, which was presented at the November 2008 In-Store Marketing Instute Expo in Las Vegas.

Insight Into Action, which was presented at the May 2009 PMA Shopper Marketing Confrence in Dallas.

To download, visit our Presentations section or click here.

The May Edition of The Checkout Is Now Available!

This month's edition features insights into the roles that value, shopability, consumer confidence and the economy play on the shopping mindset. Value still reigns, but is its rule softening? Are shoppers becoming more sensitive to in-store hassles? Do consumers feel better about their financial situations? For the answers to these questions and more, download the latest edition of The Checkout here.

Perkonomics

Budget-conscious consumers are still controlling the game, leaving retailers and manufacturers to sit on the sidelines anxiously awaiting the next play. However, as the economy levels off somewhat, what will it take to get shoppers comfortable enough to start spending again? A little bit of free love.

While marketers may be struggling to make do with less budget, there is still the opportunity to tap into  PERKONOMICS* to show you understand that it’s not ONLY price your audiences care about. There are ways to reward and, yes, even incent, someone to shop for your product or service with things that go beyond… things. After all, giving is the new ultimate benefit. And a “giving” brand needs to give to consumers, to employees, to the environment and to social causes (not necessarily all at once).

Detailed are a few examples that demonstrate how you can show you care not only for your individual consumer, but for the greater good as well. Click here to read more on the latest edition of Integer Pulse from out Midwest office.

Special Delivery - Finishing eCommerce Right

Recently, I purchased a pair of Tom's Shoes. You may now know the brand, as they were recently featured in an AT&T commercial.  Considering that Tom's donates a pair of shoes to impoverished children, for every pair purchased, it seems they must try to manage costs somewhere to maintain their business model. Well, as I found out, its not in their packaging.

Shopper marketing is about the entire process of shopping.  Often, the focus is too much on the path to purchase, and the post-purchase consumer experience gets lost.  When it comes to eCommerce, this post purchase experience is even more important because this is sometimes the shopper's first tangible experience with their purchase.  And I like what Tom's delivered. It was simple, re-enforced the brand and made me feel even better about my purchase than I already did.

This was their shoe box.

In side the box, the shoes came in a shoe bag (not a ton of tissue paper).

Are Virtual Store Studies Any Good? Apparently Yes

Can you actually predict shoppers' behaviors by having them pretend to shop while sitting in front of their computer?

Apparently you can. Decision Insight from Kansas City claims a 90% correlation of their virtual research results with actual store sales data from IRI.

What have they tested? Shelf sets, packaging, SKU mix, promotions & displays, and even pricing. Grocery Headquarters has a Heinz ketchup case study about shelf sets; reducing the SKU count by 25% grew category sales--good for both Heinz and the retailer. Another example about Kellogg's Smart Start cereal packaging is at AFN.

These artificial, desk-bound, not-in-shopping-mindset virtual studies seem to be highly predictive of real-world results. Virtual store research might not just be good enough: it might be good.

Phone Applications Bring Shopping Utility

Currently top of the paid Lifestyle section of the App Store on iTunes, this application from MidCentury Software starts to bring some utility to the iPhone for shoppers. It has some shortcomings, but it allows you to create lists for different stores, situations, copy from other lists, add prices for budgeting and so on.

It's utility like this, as well as branded utility from the likes of Kraft with their iFood Assistant or Shazam with their music look up application, that is driving the use of technology, its adoption into our culture and increasingly how we shop.

It's really important though to think about what the role your brand might play in bringing such utility to an audience. Based on our experience there are a number of things to consider.

- How does it add value to your audience?
- Is it relevant to them?
- Does it leverage your content to enhance the expedience for the user?
- How much work do they have to put in to use it?

The apps that really get it right make something useful for their audience such that they share some of their personal information, are happy to be marketed too and be willing to pay for it.

So there's real opportunity for retailers to link their back-end systems to this type of application so that users can see real time prices and availability in store. Now that would be useful because, if people are prepared to pay for an application that requires lots of manual work, what would it be worth paying to have real-time store data delivered to you? There's so many great opportunities for the further convergence of the retail and digital spaces.

To be Social or Not to be Social?

It’s around us everyday - we tweet, update our Facebook status, become 1 of 948,543 fans of Skittles, research how to cure a hangover on Wiki.com, upload pictures from Vegas to Picasa, and write on our blogs before even taking showers in the morning. 

Social media is all around us and is becoming a normal part of our daily lives.  Because social media use is now equivalent to watching TV (an everyday occurrence), brands are finding ways to connect with consumers in this space in a variety of ways. Brands use social media to appeal to audiences, to engage with their consumers, and to leverage their brand advocates.

Comcast - Helping Customers.

A majority of us have had problems with our cable/Internet provider - the cable goes out, the Internet is running at a snail’s pace, or the bill is beyond the comprehension of someone who didn’t major in math at Harvard.  This past year, Comcast added a Twitter division (Comcast Cares) to its Customer Service department to help respond to the immediacy/instant gratification desired when current Comcast customers have problems with their service. Numerous Twitter users tweet about bad experiences/frustrations they have with Comcast. Comcast searches for those comments among the Twitter database and can be directly connected to the frustrated Tweeter via the Twitter Direct Message button, so they can privately discuss issues via e-mail.¹