Shopper Culture

Neo-Patriotism

Red, white and true-blue Neo-Patriotism is increasing with a Be American, Buy American focus. While many in the U.S. still feel the frustration of an economy out-of-whack, many are also feeling more connected to their communities. This has locals realizing that while they may not be able to fix everything in Washington, they can begin to fix things in their own backyards. And this is fueling a new feeling of hope.

It's important to note that this growing optimism is grassroots-based - it's grow-your-own or "share the wealth" produce, or a more neighborly way to sell the idea of American-made goods. So what does this mean for your product or service? Every little bit helps, and starting small feels more possible for shoppers who are paring back. Click here to read more on the July edition of the Integer Pulse from our Midwest office.

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 our 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 

The Shopper Culture Poll

We recently started polling Shopper Culture visitors about various topics that are relevant to what's happening in the industry. The poll is intended to be a fun way to see how shopperculture.com visitors compare to the rest of the country. One question we asked recently was how much you used certain digital media in your shopping habits. Here are the results:

Online purchases ranked the highest with 87.% of respondents saying that they've "Made a purchase online in the past month". This agrees with a trend that can be seen in the May edition of the The Checkout, which saw a national increase in online shopping of 3% from March. The second most popular digital-shopping application that shopperculture.com visitors have used in the past month was "Downloading a coupon," at 42%. This number also supports a trend from the May Checkout data: Given the recent economy, many shoppers are turning to new shopping behaviors they may have dismissed in the past. Money-saving techniques are being used the most. 45% of people said they have started using more store or manufacturer coupons and 31% have started using internet coupons more often.

An astounding 21% of shopperculture.com respondents said that they have used a mobile shopping app in the last month, only 6% of those surveyed in The Checkout said they used their mobile phone as a shopping aid. However, this was a significant increase from March, which indicates a trend toward increased usage of cell phones as shopping tools.

It seems like Shopper Culture visitors are more technologically advanced than the U.S. representative sample from The Checkout data, but it's interesting to see that we share some of the same sentiments about saving money and shopping convenience as the rest of the country. 

The May edition of The Checkout will be available here soon, and don't to forget to take the Shopper Culture Poll over there on the right hand column of the blog.

Creative Services, Now With a Retail Storefront

What’s one part consumer-insights incubator, one part product-development micro-machine, and one (maybe even two) parts trend hunter? It’s The 400, an independent creative-services firm in Denver that is also a retail storefront where you can buy limited-edition sneakers and lifestyle apparel.

Leaving focus groups and post-analysis lag time in the dust, The 400 is rethinking the way marketers use beta culture and apply shopper insights about ‘core’ cultures. For these guys, the most valuable wisdom is pulled directly from the source. It’s insight hunting in real-time, and that’s what makes it so compelling. When every retail transaction can inform future marketing communications, there’s a lot of reason to pay attention.

Case in point: The partnership The 400 has established with brand licensing and management firm Collective International, LLC (whose clients include Airwalk, Sims, and Lamar). Several times a year, The 400 pulls youth-culture insights on behalf of Collective International and creates custom marketing and design tools based on the findings. Insight reports, ranging from Consumer Usage Trends to Footwear Market Direction, help Collective International keep their fingers on the pulse of key influencers in youth fashion, music, technology, and sports. 

This approach has led to some dynamic marketing work for skate/snow/art/punk culture brands, a result of blurring (and breaching) the lines between the brand and the consumer. It could be argued that the brand and the consumer sometimes meld into one. It’s a group-mind approach that reflects The 400’s goal of creating “brand communication solutions that resonate and form emotionally driven loyalty between consumers and brands.”

The 400 believe the insights they gather for their clients at their own store will help them stay plugged into the ever-evolving landscape of core consumer behavior. For us, the implications of this experiment are just as telling: the closer we can get to the front lines of retail, the more organic the insights become, and the more our brands become a part of the conversation.

Get the scoop on what’s going on at The 400 at the400.net.

- Contributed by Patrick Sullivan

Products Tease New Products

Purex fabric softeners uses its own product to pre-launch a new product.  

In the detergent aisle at King Soopers, I found an interesting neckhanger. I did a double take because the communication on Purex fabric softener announced the arrival of a new product. "Coming Soon! Introducing the all in one laundry solution." It's for Purex Complete 3-in-1 Laundry Sheets.

I haven't seen this idea done, at least not in-store. There are two interesting things about this. 

1) The communication uses a shopper's current purchase journey to announce a new product in the aisle where the shopper is considering and finding the detergent she wants. 

2) The communication idea is borrowed from coming movie attractions, COMING SOON. The product isn't even in-store, yet it builds some excitement and anticipation to go looking for it in the detergent aisle the next time she needs to stock up. 

Great idea. I even went to the Web site. It was simple. Purex.com, the main brand's home page, not a 3-in-1 or some other microsite, but the brand's home page. There were several great things about the Web site too.

 

1) This launch/prelaunch is front and center on the home page. There's no missing it.

2) It provides a great online product demonstration.

3) It offers easy navigation, product information, lots of ways to learn more, and easy buttons to find a store.

Nice job Purex; especially using a shopper's current buying/decision-making behaviors to talk about new products. What are other products that tease other new product launches?

Time Vs. Money

We know that the currencies of time and money are paramount in determining how, when, and where a shopper will buy. With these two left to duke it out, which comes out on top? It's a close race, but there's a winner -- money.

According to an Integer® and M/A/R/C® monthly shopper update, "The Checkout", in February, deal-seeking was consistently ranked as the primary motivator for shopping. In addition, when looking at people's primary shopping goals, spending as little money as possible (28%) comes in way ahead of spending as little time as possible in store (6%). 

March data revealed that shoppers have an even stronger desire for value and savings vs. the previous couple  months. The number-one criteria for store choice is being able to save as much money as possible (46%), followed by time-saving factors such as location convenience (40%), ease of finding items (22%) and quick check-out (18%).

When it comes down to it, shoppers are extremely value-oriented. Given the choice, the majority of them prefer to save money over time. Is our willingness to sacrifice or precious time for monetary savings a function of our values as a country? Or is it simply a reflection of our current economic situation?

Small Is Big

Conspicuous has evolved into conscious as many walk away from the idea that having everything is the answer to everything. Over the past few years consumers have realized that over-consumption was impacting the earth, and in turn their lives, in negative ways. But the Small Is Big macro trend truly found its niche when the economic meltdown kicked in and required all to reassess the importance of "a whole lot of stuff."

So, if having less is more, how can businesses thrive when consumers with shrinking budgets are trying to minimize their carbon footprints and acquire less? The answer is to find balance - balance between too much and too little. Just as shoppers are looking at what they really need, brands, services and products must "take a step back" to see where they can find balance in what they're offering. A few good examples of this are; Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging, Not So Big Remodeling, and Honda Touts Long-Term Value. Read more on the May issue of the Integer Pulse here. 

Dollar Stores make a comeback

ShopperCulture.com recently published a post on who's up and who's down in the current retail climate. Not surprisingly, retailers with a strong value proposition lead, like BJ's Wholesale Club, Ross, Costco and Wal-Mart. Recently a somewhat overlooked format has emerged as a leader for today's economy-conscious shoppers: Dollar Stores. 

You may be surprised to know that two dollar stores chains appear in the Fortune 500 list of America's biggest companies: Dollar General (#259) and Dollar Tree (#499). Still a long shot from Wal-Mart, Fortune's no.2 company following Exxon Mobil, Dollar Stores are nonetheless growing faster than other retail formats, according to a recent article in The New York Times.

My personal recollection of dollar stores is that of cluttered, disorganized environments usually set in a downscale strip mall, with boxes blocking the aisles, cleaning products, stacks of Little Debbie cakes and dusty two-liter Coke bottles, and no assistance to be found without dislodging a cashier who is already serving a long checkout queue. According to The New York Times report, times are changing. Dollar Stores are becoming more mainstream: selecting better locations (often left unoccupied by failed retail tenants), widening aisles, reorganizing store layout, even adding refrigerators and freezers in order to steal share from Grocery.

Family Dollar plans to open 200 new stores this year; Dollar Tree will open 235 new stores and relocate 90 existing ones; and Dollar General, the category leader, will open 450 new stores and relocate or remodel another 400. Dollar store executives realize that time is of the essence.

There is a strong element of psychology behind dollar store merchandising. Most dollar stores attempt to stay true to the promise of goods for $1 or under. Last Year, Dollar Tree tried selling items for more than $1, but the result was lackluster and prices have been adjusted back to the dollar-or-less price point.

Which leads us to two questions. What happens when inflation (which is low these days) makes it impossible to sell goods under the $1 price point. Smaller packaging? 10 eggs for a dollar instead of 12? And what happens when the economy recovers? Dollar store executives are banking on the format to become mainstream and to enjoy growth even in a strong economy. But old perceptions, like mine, may prevent dollar stores from ever becoming mainstream. ShopperCulture welcomes your thoughts.

The Differences in XX and XY Shopper Marketing

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus - we get it. Men and women communicate in fundamentally different ways, however, now we need to start looking at how the different genders shop in different ways. In particular, men and women choose their retailers against differing criteria, which ultimately means that retailers must communicate to these audiences in two distinct manners. 

According to a recent Integer® and M/A/R/C® monthly shopper update, The Checkout, when choosing a retailer, women are 25% more likely than men to choose price and men are 15% more likely than women to choose convenience. Supporting this finding, the study reveals that women are 20% more likely than men to use manufacturer coupons and men are 13% more likely to use self-checkout. 

These findings point to two important insights. The first insight reveals that shopping communication to men should reinforce the ease and simplicity of shopping at a particular retailer or in category. For instance, the toiletry aisle should be well marked and effortless to shop, so they can easily find the products they need and move on quickly. In contrast, shopping communication to women should call out the quality of the retailer or category and reinforce the savings she could take advantage of. In this way, women are drawn to a particular category or retailer that has the highest=quality products for the best prices. 

Additional findings form the Integer and M/A/R/C monthly shopper updates will be posted here, on Shopper Culture, in the coming weeks.

-Contributed by Vanessa Munson

Welcome to the Checkout

Introducing the The Checkout, a new 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. We delve into topics such as the criteria shoppers use to select retailers, which in-store stimulus are most likely to drive purchase, and, by contrast, factors that might lead shoppers to leave the aisle without selecting an item. The Checkout, which will be published each month here on Shopper Culture, is designed to be a useful tool for tracking certain shopper marketing trends over time. We hope you enjoy and would like your feedback along the way. Click here to download the April report.

Take a look at The Checkout Media Release here.

Integer To Participate In 2009 PMA Shopper Marketing Summit

The Integer Group will be participating in this year's PMA Shopper Marketing Summit in Dallas on May 6th and 7th. Both Craig Elston and Paul Ballew will sit on expert panels during the two day event. 

Craig will participate on the Making Insights Happen: Agency Perspective panel, which will discuss how agencies are approaching insight generation and securing retailer cooperation. Paul will sit on the Fast Forward: Emerging Opportunities in Convenience Retailing panel, building on the release of our recent report, "Emerging Opportunities in Convenience Retailing". Integer will join NACS members, including MillerCoors and 7-Eleven, on May 7th. 

The summit will also feature the results of the 2009 PMA Shopper Marketing Study and keynote presentations from Dr. Brian Harris, the founder of category management (Is Shopper Marketing the Next Generation of Category management?) and Dr. David Bell from Wharton (Shopper Marketing 2.0 Understanding the Layered Influences on the Shopper Path to Purchase). 

If you're going to be in Dallas and are interested in attending you can visit the PMA website for a complete agenda and registration details. If you're already planning on attending the event please stop by, say hello and sit in on our panels. 

What is Culture, Anyway?

(This is a long post.)

On this blog we often write about behavior, psychology, technology, marketing, business, promotions, design, and of course retail. But what is culture? And why does it matter for shopping?

Rather than a definition, let’s start with illustrations. Culture is why a rural Tuvan man would feel lost at the Super Bowl—not just understanding what this spectacle means, but basics like assigned seating, being an audience, and credit cards. Culture is why a yellow ribbon, a Yankees logo, a cross,and a Starbucks logo can elicit powerful feelings—feelings which could be quite different for different people.

Culture, in other words, is the vast and mostly unwritten rule system that tells us how to interpret events, behaviors, objects and symbols in our lives. It’s shared meaning. To an extent, culture is also the objects and symbols themselves: Super Bowl tickets, foam #1 hands, the Lombardi Trophy. But crucially, culture is the mental code book of meaning that a group shares to encode and decode those symbols. And different groups have different code books, even for the same events (dinner) behaviors (kissing), objects (high heels) and symbols (the stars & stripes).

In shopping, culture is what distinguishes the vibe at Whole Foods from the vibe at Rite Aid. Culture is the knowing glance you share with another shopper about the old woman in front of you who still pays by check. Culture is the message Walmart’s reusable blue bag sends about you.

 

Culture is any one of these things, and more:

-    Rules for social interactions (who’s next in line; what to say to sales staff)
-    Roles (greeters, cashiers, samplers, stockers, shoppers)
-    Beliefs about concepts like gender and time (men hate to shop; time is currency not to be wasted)
-    Taboos (don’t scream in a store; don’t take things from someone else’s cart)
-    Systems of trust (Amazon vendor ratings; product guarantees)
-    Rituals (roaming the mall after school, holiday displays)
-    Shared goals (make shopping fun; reduce time at checkout)
-    Symbols of group membership (a football jersey; Bloomingdale’s Brown Bag)
-    A special language or lexicon (freebates; Tweets; one-click)

But do we need to understand shopper culture? Can’t we just do with behavioral studies, purchase data, and the cool new neuroscience stuff? Not quite. Because without culture, we can’t even interpret everyday symbols correctly, much less comprehend how those meanings are changing or how we can influence them.

A small example: the loyalty card. To shoppers it’s a link to a brand, a system for discounts, a symbol of Big Brother. To retailers it’s their brand equity, better customer behavioral data, competitive advantage. To store staff, it’s a hassle, a way to ‘get some extra’ (use one with cardless customers & get their points).

All those meanings packed into a little piece of colored plastic. And they’re changing. But how? And how can these meanings be managed? This is why culture matters in shopper marketing. And not just how the broader culture impacts shopping (like the green movement), but the culture of shopping itself.

This is why our blog is about shopper culture. Because marketing is about both symbol and meaning, signifier and signified. Studying shopping with no reference to culture is like, well, studying Tuvan throat singing with no knowledge of Tuva.