Shopper Culture

To She or Not to She

So here's a question. Let's say you're a brand with a target audience that's 21 to 34 male and predominantly single. And let's also say that more than half your sales come from the grocery channel where the solid majority of shoppers are married women. So, do you style your in-store communications to sell Mrs. Shopper? Or do you stick to branding for Mr. Target? Though the latter doesn't make much sense, if you start changing the way you look and sound to better reach someone outside your target audience-the opposite of your target audience even-you wind up compromising your brand and confusing the conviction. What to do? This video's been out for a while, but I think it illustrates the lack of understanding that some brands approach the female shopper with.

-Contributed by Thomas Daniels

When Does Your Consumer Become a Shopper?

When does your consumer become a shopper, and is that time frame changing and beginning to blur? When is the best time to strike with your marketing message? Has that timing changed? Is your organization adjusting and adapting to the new Web dynamic world we are all living in?

These questions came to mind as I watched a video a colleague passed along from Ad Age about Vail Resort's marketing strategy and how it has changed in response to their target's change in behavior. Click here to view the video.

In a nutshell, Vail learned that the window for planning a ski vacation had shifted from six months in advance to a time-crunched two-three weeks. Vacationers were no longer planning at a leisurely pace. Instead, they were condensing their time frames. The time it took from the moment they thought of taking a ski vacation, planned and booked it, to the moment they actually showed up with their skis in hand ready to tackle the mountain has gotten much shorter. That shift from six months to three weeks is now a much quicker journey through the Shopper Continuum™ from Pre-tail™ to Retail to Post-tail™.

As a result, Vail pulled a vast majority of their branding budget (mainly big, glossy magazine ads) and reallocated it to a dynamic-messaging strategy where they could use social-media outlets to craft more timely and relevant messaging to would-be vacationers. Did they shift their strategy from targeting consumers to targeting shoppers? I would argue that they did. They identified the most opportune time to hit their target with the right message at the right time - when they are in a shopper mindset. A would-be vacationer's shopping environment is the Web; that is Vail's storefront. Vail has appropriately shifted their marketing gears to take advantage of this change in behavior.

Will it pay off? Time will tell, but I would bet my new pair of K2s that it will.

Integrating Online Shopping Experiences With Offline Retail

As an online shopper, one thing I have become really accustomed to is consumer reviews and user-generated product ratings. Whether you're looking to buy a new TV at Best Buy or order a book off Amazon, right there, at the point of purchase, you have the honest feedback from consumers who have already used the product. Thanks to online shopping, we no longer shop "alone", we have the information and opinions from hundreds of our peers to help reinforce our purchase decisions. This is one experience I think gets lost at traditional brick-and-mortar retail.

With the rise of social media, mobile applications, and instore digital-POS signage, we have had the technology to integrate these experiences for some time now. So why have we yet to see a major effort from traditional retailers to try to adapt some of the popular online shopping features to the offline shopping experience?

 
 

One retailer that is experimenting with social shopping technology at traditional brick-and-mortar outlets is Sephora, a leading beauty-products retailer. Sephora recently launched a new mobile application that allows shoppers to read product reviews when considering a purchase instore. By logging on to m.sephora.com, shoppers can enter the 12-digit UPC or product name and browse information, consumer reviews, and ratings on the product they are holding in their hand.

It will be interesting to see how traditional retailers begin to adapt to the changes in shopper behavior brought on by online retail. How far will they go to try and create a seamless shopping experience between online and offline for their customers? 

Driving Traffic From One Holiday Shopping Location to Another Via Interactive Text

Hanging flat-screens and speakers were recently installed at a local mall's food court. During this holiday season, a “text in your song request, and get entered to win an XBox” promotion took advantage of this new entertainment technology. I decided to participate. I texted in my song request, and received a text reply stating “…Your song will play in less than 1 minute. Reply Xbox and enter for a chance to win an XBOX 360!” So I did. I then received another text stating that I was entered, the drawing date, and the url for the promotion background and rules.  Once my video started playing I received another text stating, “Your song is playing now! Reply bestbuy to get $30 Best Buy gift card offer w/Xbox 360 Elite purchase. Expires 12/31/09.” So I did, and received a promotional code to give a cashier.

 


This is an interesting promotion because, first, the goal was to drive people away from one shopping location (this mall) to another shopping location. (Best Buy was not located inside this mall.) Second, the location and interaction of the promotion was unique. Third, the promotion helped identify purchase intent for an XBox in a friendly way. I got to listen to my chosen music without ever having to enter the contest or replying that I was intending to buy an Xbox 360 by year’s end.

While text promotions provide the next chapter for CRM programs, I’m curious to watch how the face of CRM will evolve and change in this new digital age.

Putting Enjoyment Back Into the Shopping Experience

“Shopping is getting much less fun” was one of the key points in Integer’s latest issue of The Checkout. While there are many things that contribute to and impact this overall feeling of shoppers, I am encouraged by seeing helpful, interactive, and fun tools that aid the shopping experience.

Here are a few recent examples.

Target’s Shoe-Sizing Floor Map.

Clorox’s Wipes placed next to shopping carts.

 
Minneapolis Intl. Airport’s Piano Player located in the middle of the airport’s major shopping area. 

The power of these helpful shopping tools lies in the fact that the tools represent an understanding of the mindset and struggles/pains/annoyances shoppers experience. Second, the tools positively improve the shopping experience and provide shoppers brief moments of enjoyment. These tools can be placed anywhere during the shopping experience (parking lot, aisles, checkouts, departments, etc.). Tools can be developed at a retail level (Target’s Shoe-Sizing Floor Map), a brand level (Clorox’s Wipes), or at a shopping facilitation level (airport, mall).

With such helpful tools now in the market, it makes we wonder: what else can improve the shopping experience? Which takes me right to the parking lot. Parking is one of my pet peeves. How could parking lots be improved to make parking and entering stores less stressful? Which brands or retailers would be the best to do and sponsor this?

Cyber Monday 2009

The real retail success story for the 2009 holiday shopping season is not the marginal Black Friday gains reported by some traditional retailers amid deep discounting, but the strides made by online retailers and the many new mobile and digital tools shoppers are using to facilitate their holiday transactions.

Cyber Monday is a term coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation in an attempt to establish an online equivalent to the Black Friday shopping event. The idea at that time was that many shoppers, following a weekend of brick-and-mortar shopping, would return to their offices and use their employers' high-speed internet connections to fill in their holiday shopping.

In fact, the term Cyber Monday is already becoming obsolete, since far more Americans have high-speed internet at home, and online retailers are pushing price promotions that predate Black Friday.

To this point, online sales on Black Friday alone were up 11% over 2008 to $595 million, according to ComScore, which monitors online traffic and commerce. Cyber Monday sales increased just 5 percent over 2008, to $887 million, ComScore also reported.  Among the top 500 online retailers, sales increased 14 percent over 2008 according to Coremetrics, another online research firm. Nearly half of Cyber Monday shopping was done from home locations, underscoring the growth of high-speed residential internet.

Americans are spending more online, and they're buying more items as well. On Cyber Monday alone, Coremetrics noticed that online shoppers were buying 30% more items than the previous year among the top 500 online retailers. 

This spending was highly concentrated among top online retailers. Amazon saw 16 percent of site visits on Cyber Monday, pushed partly by demand for their Kindle reading devices. Walmart followed with nearly 10 percent of site visits, followed by Target (5 percent), Best Buy (4 percent) and JC Penney (3 percent). In other words more than one-third of online shoppers visited these five of the top 500 online shops this year.

Much of the success of online shopping in 2009 can be attributed to smarter practices on the part of online retailers. Many are adapting proven techniques from traditional retailers: special "early-bird" savings (many starting days before Black Friday), free "gift-card" savings and free shipping were among the most popular draws. 

But a big part of the story takes place behind-the-scenes. Shoppers are using more and more digital and mobile tools to facilitate both online and physical shopping transactions. They go online for product reviews and then click through to find nearby store locations with the best prices and inventory. SmartPhone applications like ShopSavvy allow shoppers to locate an item by photographing and submitting the barcode, then receiving an analysis of best prices online and in local stores, complete with store information and driving directions. Traditional retailers like Ann Taylor used e-mail to inform their best customers about extended savings hours on Black Friday. And other brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart and Target pushed their online store offerings to help protect against the growing trend of online purchasing.

Last year ShopperCulture challenged whether Black Friday is still an accurate indicator of economic health. This year, we ask, are one-day sales figures based on Black Friday and Cyber Monday truly the best barometers of retail sales? While single-day figures make for compelling sound bites, we think a better barometer of year-end sales would be to look at the extended weekend as a whole (or longer), both online and offline, taking into account not only traffic and sales but also sales margin, in order to account for the deep discounts that have become a mainstay of holiday shopping.

Black Friday 2009

With reports on Black Friday 2009 in, U.S. retailers can breathe a collective sigh of relief that more Americans went shopping last weekend than ever before. We shopped in numbers, and we shopped enthusiastically. 195 million of us hit the malls, downtown and suburban shopping centers, and Walmart and other large-format stores. Sales were generally up, not only in value outlets like Walmart and Target but also in high-end retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue. According to ShopperTrak, retail sales were up 0.5 percent over 2008 on Friday alone.

Good news. Right? Or is the real story not about marginal sales increases based on deep discounts, but the avoiding of the loss that many had predicted? 

Big retailers enjoyed gains -- or avoided loss -- this year by recognizing a fundamental learning from the past year: Americans will buy if you let them do it on their own terms.

Retail locations were better prepared than ever before. Stores were better staffed, and better stocked. Key sales items, such as flat-screen TVs, phones, cameras and gaming systems, were centrally featured and in plentiful supply. And while shopping lots were full, we saw fewer signs of the chaos that marked Black Friday 2008. Retailers like Macy's, Walmart, J.C. Penney and Toys "R" Us offered clear incentives -- such as additional 20 percent savings between 5:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m -- with limited exceptions and unlimited stock. Happier customers and fewer returns make the shopping situation better for everyone.

The numbers tell the story. Retail traffic was up significantly in 2009. According to the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, 195 million shoppers visited stores and websites over the long weekend, up from 172 million in 2008. However, on average they spend more cautiously. Average amount spend dropped from $372.57 to $343.31, about an 8 percent drop.

In other words, Americans are buying as strongly as ever before, but more than ever we shop with savings as the primary criterion. We are better informed about money-saving offers. We have more tools as our disposal, like digital coupons and real-time mobile price comparison apps like RedLaser (left). We expect more control over the transaction than we did before. 

Maybe the big story out of Black Friday 2009 has yet to be told. Is online shopping the real growth space? We're smarter about buying online this year, and more of us have high-speed internet connections: the National Retail Federation forecast the number of people who plan to shop today, Cyber Monday 2009, to 96.5 million in 2009, a 13 percent jump over 2008.

Which leads to two questions:

For brick-and-mortar retailers, is "flat" the new "up"?

In coming years, will digital retail be the only opportunity for real retail growth?

Stay tuned.

Turning Shoppers Into Loyal Shoppers

I recently became a Member at REI for many reasons. One is the company’s impressive return policy. This policy allows a Member to return a product, for whatever reason, and receive a new product, free. For example, an employee told me about a shopper who bought a bike from REI in 2003 and brought it in for repairs this past October, only to leave with a brand-new bike, for free. Wow!

REI just sent me a welcome coupon for 15% off. At the same time, I received a 15% coupon for Sports Authority, which provides similar products as REI for less money. Right now, I’m in need of a new pair of running shoes and a new pair of winter boots. I considered both stores.

While Sports Authority is located closer to my home, provides more running shoe product selection, and provides lower prices, this wasn’t enough to sway me. In the end, I chose to buy my two pairs of footwear from REI. REI’s return policy was the ultimate sway. I’d only have to purchase ONE TIME a pair of either type of footwear. So, basically, every 500 miles, I can take my running shoes back to REI and receive new ones – FREE. Every few seasons, when my snow boots receive too much wear and tear, back they go to REI, and brand-spanking-new ones I receive. FREE.

This act alone from REI turns me into a brand advocate and a repeat shopper and purchaser. Plus, I’m spending more time on their Web site and in their stores thinking about all the possibilities of what I could do next outdoors.

While REI (and others like L.L. Bean) has provided this service for many years, it’s still impressive.

What if CPG companies did this? What if powersports companies, like motorcycle and ATV manufacturers, did this? How would they then need to add value for their shopper? How might their relationship with their shoppers change?

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.

Social Media Count

For all you data hounds out there, this is fantastic.

Issue 5: The Checkout

The latest issue of the Checkout was released today, November 10, 2009. It features shoppers' attitudes for the holiday season, tools that retailers and manufacturers can use to win shoppers over, and a list of the top 5 "value brands" in the eyes of consumers. Finally we deconstruct what "value" actually means to shoppers. Click here do download Issue 5 of the Checkout.  

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• The Checkout: A collaboration between The Integer Group® and M/A/R/C® Research on shopper marketing trends. Each month we field a national omnibus survey in which we ask consumers about their shopping attitudes, behaviors as well as their economic outlook.
• Research and White Papers: The Integer Group® occasionally publishes some of its thoughts and points of view on the developments taking place within the retail and promotional marketing landscape.
• Integer Pulse: Each month, our office in the Midwest of the USA produces a quick trend update covering off some really interesting topics relevant to their clients.
• Content Highlights: From time to time we aggregate the best of recent posts to show a snapshot of recent topics we've written about.

 

Sustainability meets Lost-n-Found, that's Glove Love

UK based non-profit, Green Thing, capitalizes on a few consumer insights with their current fund raising effort Glove Love.  Glove Love, if you haven't heard or read, is an effort by which people donate lonely single gloves (whose partner gloves have been lost) to Green Thing. Green Thing then "lovingly washes" each glove and pairs it with a new mate. These newly paired gloves are then sold for £5 GBP ($7.90 USD). Simple, fun, interesting.

First off, as a sustainability-based non-profit trying to "inspire people to lead a greener life", they definitely take a new approach to the "reuse" portion of recycle, reduce, reuse. And, they do so in a novel way, which creates an engaging story for audiences. This story is supported on the web with social media (facebook and twitter) as well as some great videos on youtube.

(yes, that was Emma Thompson doing the voice over)

Secondly, this appeals to another consumer desire, the desire for truly unique products with their own story. To facilitate this, Glove Love actually asks people to name the gloves they donate as well as describe where exactly the lonely single was saved. That way, each pair has a story of their own. Each pair is truly one-of-a-kind.

While Green Thing certainly will not make millions off this idea, it’s a great program to gain awareness for their cause. By providing one-of-a-kind items with individual stories, they offer shoppers great WOM content to share with their circles of influence.

How many times might each Glove Love owner tell the story of their mismatched gloves? 5, 10, 20 times? If only big brands thought about story-telling this way. How do they, beyond their brand history or product benefits, create stories that their users would want to share with their friends? What might those stories be?

Convenience Makes a Comeback

The Checkout gets picked up by Adweek. 

NEW YORK Many consumers are opting to save time in lieu of money these days, according to new research from marketing firms The Integer Group and M/A/R/C.

"The Checkout" report found that 28 percent of june 2009 shoppers describe themselves as "preferring to spend more if it saves them time." This was up from 23 percent in May. Additionally, the number of customers (28 percent) who responded that "saving money by shopping around" was their top preference fell from 33 percent the month prior.

To read more on this Adweek article click here.

Big changes in shopper demographics on the horizon

The Nielsen Company projects that the face of the CPG marketplace will change considerably over the next 10+ years with massive shifts in demographics and economics redefining growth and decline.  America in 2020 will have an aging population, an increase of lower-income consumers and fewer households with children overall. And, the majority of households with children are expected to be multicultural by 2025. Based on these demographic shifts, Nielsen projects top CPG growth categories in 2020 to be ethnic H&B, medications and remedies, health aids, vitamins and cooking essentials. Biggest category declines are expected in toys, sporting goods, breakfast foods, baby care products and pet products.

What does this mean for CPG manufacturers? Doug Anderson, SVP, Global Research and Development, The Nielsen Company says, “It will be absolutely critical for CPG companies to adapt in order to gain the attention and brand loyalty of the aging Baby Boomers, multicultural families and lower-income consumers of the future. Those who keep doing what they’re doing will be left behind.”

This all raises some serious questions for the ad industry. As the population ages, declines in real income and becomes more diverse, much of the way we tend to think about our profession seems irrelevant. Our focus on youth, conspicuous consumption and the obsession with “cool” – will these ideas be as relevant in a new American marketplace? It’s not that we don’t know how to sell to Boomers, low-income or multicultural families. It’s that we often see them as a secondary consideration, an audience that will come along for the ride.

In terms of the retail environment, these trends will probably have an even bigger impact. It could mean increased fragmentation as many smaller retailers emerge to capitalize on under-served groups. Perhaps smarter shopper marketing with an emphasis on flexibility will be key. What if brands were to provide retailers with the capability to quickly and easily customize their in-store efforts to specific targets? This would allow you to switch messaging on the fly, giving each retailer a nearly custom promotion. While unfeasible today, the coming demographic changes to our culture may make this kind of dynamic marketing a necessity.

- Contributed by Amanda Parks