Shopper Culture

Inconvenience

We've a project going on in the Denver office on the notion of convenience. So this little blog has been set up by Paul to discuss the opposite - those things that inconvenience and bug the hell out of us.  He's looking for comment and stories about things that get on your nerves and you see as inconvenient in your day-to-day life. We thought we'd enlist our Shopper Culture readership to contribute the things that you all find inconvenient in your day-to-day life as we're sure there is a lot!

So please have a look and leave your own story of things that are not convenient to you somewhere on the blog, or feel free to email Paul to add to his collection of stories. If you also find your way to pass this on to other people you know get riled up by life's little inconveniences, that would be fantastic.

Thanks

Point De Ventre - Paris

Paris recently hosted a Retail Marketing event called Point De Ventre. Ian Whitney from our Paris office went along, shot some video and made a quick presentation of some of the innovative technology that delivers meaningful shopper engagement. 

Great sign-off Ian!

How much of our shopping behaviour is pure habit?

As a relatively recent arrival to the USA, my family was put through some major changes to their lives, one of which was a change in how we undertake our weekly grocery shop.  We came from a city where we had shopped on-line for most products, including weekly groceries, for the last 5 or so years.  The convenience of having what we ordered delivered to our door within a two hour time slot is fabulous.  However, we moved to an environment where that is no longer a viable option, having instead to drive to a supermarket and walk the aisles. (And as I am at work most of the time, I confess that my role in this activity is now non-existent!)

We were discussing this with friends the other week though and I was amazed at quite how quickly my wife had fallen into a pattern of behaviour that, when we thought about it, is driven purely by habit.  Very quickly she fell into a new routine - she uses the same supermarkets, walks the aisles in the same order, buying the same brands, on the same day of the week at about the same time.  It's clockwork.  She doesn't even particularly like one of the supermarkets she uses - it is cluttered, cramped and not the nicest environment.  Yet there is little incentive to change going there, and when I asked her about why if she is not that impressed, she doesn't go somewhere else, she hadn't really thought about it. It's just part of how she lives her life now.

So how much of our shopping behaviour is actually driven out of habit? How sedimented do we become with regular purchases like this?  How much more difficult is it to change our shopping behaviour than to establish it?  When was the last time you thought about and changed how you shop? 

And what impact would a change in the store environment have on our shopping basket? I guess the impulse to act is not that great for my wife, but how much better could shopping be (and how much more money a supermarket, in this case, might extract?) if they could break down this cycle of habit? What could the store and/or brands be doing to make this a better experience, to help her discover new things and make it interesting?

Retail Surveillance

As I was reading the December 6, 2007 issue of the Economist, I couldn’t help but think of the irony involved as retailers attempt to create more personal environments for their customers.  The article, Watching As You Shop, points out the very impersonal technologies being developed and utilized by retailers around the world to learn more about their customers in order to provide them with a better shopping experience.

Customer monitoring software can now measure how long queue lines are at registers, which parts of the store are the most traveled, and how long customers stay in one place.  From Tesco in the UK to Walgreens, Best Buy, or Abercrombie & Fitch in the US, the channel is irrelevant as retailers are employing the technology to create a point of difference, and for good reason. 

In addition to a more pleasurable experience for customers, retailers are hoping to increase sales by learning what types of promotions are working and what areas are “hot spots” in the store for traffic flow.  Combine increased sales with more efficient staffing and retailers are not only increasing sales, they are cutting costs.

The players specializing in customer monitoring software range from companies such as Irisys and Brickstream to a consortium including manufacturers such as Coke and Procter & Gamble (P.R.I.S.M.) to university initiatives like VideoMining a spin-off from Penn State.

With this kind of focus already placed on how we shop, the technology to understand our actions in-store is only going to get more specific and actionable, begging the question: As consumers become aware of the technologies used to study their behavior, will they care? 

There is a lesson to be learned here from American Express.  When they openly discussed how they review cardholders' spending patterns to tailor offers to them, they faced a significant consumer backlash.  Even though they had been doing this for years, their cardholders felt betrayed.  My guess is that we as a culture are getting more comfortable with this type of information being gathered about us and as long as we believe we are getting a better deal or experience we won’t mind too much.

[Image: Irisys]

- Contributed by Todd Cameron

Can you really tell shoppers what to buy?

An interesting piece in the Weekend Wall Street Journal this Saturday prompts a question regarding how shoppers are engaged to buy a product.  The article talks about high-end boutiques and retailers in New York City calling or emailing consumers to tell them which expensive items their loved ones would like or might be interested in.  It's part of a growing trend by these retailers, both on and off-line, to increase their holiday retail sales...and for some consumers it's a god-send, yet for others it's an unwanted intrusion.

While the article depicts a fairly "narrow" circumstance, it does point to the opportunity to engage consumers differently.  The idea of reaching out to consumers to guide their purchases is not new - we've all received Catalina coupons in grocery stores that offer an incentive to buy a like (or competitive) product based on our purchase the clerk just scanned, and it's hard to avoid Amazon's "If you like this, you might also like this" approach to suggestive selling (which, by the way, really works).  Starbucks this past year began leveraging Apple's iPhone and the iTunes music service - shoppers walk into a cafe to buy a latte, hear music in the store, and are automatically contacted via WiFi on their iPhone with a message "If you like this song, please hit 'purchase' " and the song is downloaded to their phone. 

There are new technologies coming that will further enhance these opportunities to reach out to consumers and "help" their shopping. The advanced mobile phones from Europe and Asia that store credit card data on handsets and read RFID tags are coming to the U.S.

And the ability to scan UPC codes at shelf with a mobile handset and automatically receive product information and, more importantly, consumer reviews to help select (or worse de-select) a particular product at the exact moment of purchase decision is right around the corner.  The downside is that consumers can also then determine where to go to find the best price for that product, which might not be in that particular store.  But rather than feel defensive, brands should embrace that "moment of choice" for the shopper to proactively engage the potential buyer with information (and better yet an experience) that helps them close the sale right then and there.  And ideally sets up a repeat engagement with that same buyer the next time they're in the market for the product.

Brands need to think about a broader range of influences on their shoppers.  The myriad of communication vehicles traditionally deployed to reach consumers will continue to be important.  But it's the combination of those elements with new, different contact points that will create the newest, best ways to influence purchase behavior.  As shopper behavior shifts, so the need for brand behavior to change increases, and finding ways to effectively reach out and "suggest" a specific purchase is something to add to the communication arsenal.  While right for some brands, it is appropriate behavior for all?

Contributed by Marc Ducnuigeen

The Cosmetic Worlds Collide

It used to be that one had two options for cosmetics and skincare - the drugstore or department store. Both had their advantages and disadvantages. At the drugstore, you had a multitude of choices, all at reasonable prices. But, there was no opportunity for experimentation or exploration. If the lipstick shade you bought was within three shades of what the picture looked like, you considered yourself lucky.

On the other hand, department stores were just waiting for you to come in and try. Unfortunately, they were crawling with pushy, overdone sales people committed to their lines, not to you.

Enter Sephora. The current Mecca of cosmetic retail, Americans are absolutely spellbound by endless rows of testers, hard to find products, and unbiased staff. It's like the Super Bowl of makeup. Each store is a mad house during every single business hour. They're opening new stores across the country like they're going out of style.

But there's still something missing. What happens when you do need advice? You can stick your hand in that shiny gooey stuff, but where the heck do you put it on your face? And what is the difference between that $100 eye cream and that $100 eye gel? Even if you can find a staff member who's not running around like a chicken with their head cut off, he or she's probably not going to be much for education. It's high-end product with low-end experience - like shopping Neiman's at Target.

If you're a lipstick whore (meaning you know your stuff), this is your spot. If you're a novice, god speed.  I still think there's opportunity in this market for a different kind of retail. Space NK, a British upscale Beauty retailer, is opening 4 stores in the Tri-state area by the end of the year. They have 60+ stores in the UK, and are bringing their unique retail approach to the US. Hallmarks of Space NK are hard-to-find lines, education and trial, makeup-trained sales staff (that aren't commissioned by line), and a chic, upscale atmosphere.

According to Space NK,

"We provide a highly edited selection of the best products from true innovators within the industry and this offering caters to many different lifestyle choices. We employ highly educated sales associates and expert make-up artists who enjoy working with customers."

While my guess is that nothing about this store is a bargain, you do get to test the products with trained, unbiased staff in the kind of environment you'd expect when you drop $250 on 12 oz of goodies. Here you can escape the madness that is Sephora, and the stuffiness that is (enter favorite department store here).

While we wait for the right balance of self service vs. trained staff, of get-in-get-out vs. stay-awhile, and of try vs. don't try, I can't wait to see how Space UK does. It's about time the beauty market went boutique.

Ebay: Shop Victoriously

Ebay has come out with a couple new TV spots that put the thrill of shopping front and center.  These are all about the outcome, the prize at the conclusion of an auction.  While another spot highlights the thrill of the hunt in all its competitiveness and passion, ultimately these folks plainly feel like, well, losers if they don't end of with the prized item.

It closely parallels something we looked into in our Shopper Study, namely the path of a shopper in a Master relationship with the retailer.

More here.

Tesco - arriving in a US neighborhood near you soon

From Craig Elston:

Tesco.  The paragon of British retailing has been getting much press in the US as they prepare to launch their Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores in the American West. 

That they generate so much coverage is of no surprise.  Tesco has talked about entering the largest grocery market on the planet for some time.  And I am in no doubt that they will be a success.  Having been a customer of Tesco for as long as I can remember in the UK, their continual development of store formats and own label products will be welcome again in our house (when they get to Colorado).

The last five years or so of grocery shopping by our house in the UK was undertaken online. The fact that when you register on Tesco.com your eons worth of Clubcard data (i.e. things you have bought in the past) automatically make up your shopping list, meant there really was little need to actually go into a store for our family shop other than for something to do on a wet Saturday afternoon. 

So it was a shock (and surprise) to come to the US, have to go shopping for groceries and find ourselves faced with such choice.  Far too much choice in fact - it is completely overwhelming.  There are these huge sheds of food products, often quite devoid of any people, in which you have to choose from so many options in every category. 

And here-in lies what will probably be the key to success for Tesco; they are superb at editing.  They have made it clear that each store will have a limited, edited set of SKUs.  And no doubt each store will vary based on local demographic so that the SKU set is relevant. 

Back in the UK, when I used to visit the Tesco Metro near my office in Soho at lunch time, its product range was very different to the product SKUs available in the Tesco Express by the tube station close to my home.  But both were undeniably Tesco - high quality good value products.  They just understand the neighborhood and the differences in the mindset of the shopper there. They then meet their needs through a highly edited set of products. Interestingly, it never felt like you weren't getting a choice. 

There is nothing to suggest that the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market concept won't be the same. Nor that local residents won't be flocking there in their droves.

More to come.

Mother nature helps change shopping behaviour

July was a bit wet in the UK. According to the met office, rainfall was "generally well above average". When it rains in the UK, people generally don't fancy going to the shops much.   Figures just out from the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) - a leading industry body for global e-retailing - show that UK Internet retail sales rose to £4.2bn in July, up from £2.3bn in the same month a year earlier.

The weather wasn't the only contributory factor. Improvements in retailer web site design and greater penetration of broadband Internet connections make the experience far better for the shopper, so we are seeing a shift in behaviour to greater shopping on-line. This can only be a continuing trend as a greater number of consumers become more and more comfortable with taking their on-line research all the way through to purchase.

This July year on year increase also comes in spite of five Bank of England base rate increases over the same period which many analysts were expecting would have had a negative impact on the overall level of retail sales in the UK.  The increases though do seem to be driven by discounting and summer sales, tactics a number of retailers have used this summer to get Brits spending.

Body Language in Shopping

Neilsen has just released a new consumer insight piece on modes of shopping. Entitled 'Body language: A study of shopper modality' it brings together two data sources (Neilsen Scantrack data and some customized research) to identify 4 typologies (or modes) of shopping and the categories where we are to see that behavior most likely occurring. The article attests that the modes create definite 'body language' that consumers adopt and that marketers need to read correctly so as to not waste promotional dollars.

I don't think any of these modes will be a surprise, but Nielsen have given them a neat little moniker that would help us all think about how shoppers are acting when they shop a given category. It also provides some useful insight for the packaged good manufacturer on how they should behave in the category, depending upon their position.

I think the fusion of this kind of data is extremely useful. To understand, from the perspective of past behavior, how a shopper is likely to walk the isle, view the shelf-set and make brand choices provides useful insight into how to engage the consumer most appropriately in-store to build strategies for growth. To do so from a longitudinal data perspective also makes that conversation with brands much simpler.

How we get over the issues of in-store distraction, like this ...

we've still got to work on.