ShopperCentric

OTC

Whilst this brand enjoyed market leadership and overall growth, the client team noticed significantly lower sales within the grocery channel. To understand this performance we designed a two stage process with key target shoppers. Stage one involved an accompanied grocery shop to study the fixture and category offering. A second stage of facilitated qualitative groups, with the very same consumers, then allowed us to build on this shared experience and gain real depth of insight.

The lightbulb moment was in understanding that in fact, reaching the moment of purchase had already required the consumer to overcome huge barriers. The disappointment for shoppers to then reach the shelf and find confusing category merchandising, packaging and product labelling created a whole new barrier of what to buy and how it might work.

These insights generated a number of potential changes; to product naming and dosage/efficacy labelling and also to the clarity of fixture merchandising and signage.

DIY

We have enjoyed an ongoing programme of work with this leading manufacturer for a number of years, with the objective of continually building their shopper knowledge base.

The original kick off project involved a complete evaluation of the category. We used extended shopper workshops with a complete range of products to create a category segmentation model. We followed this with an ethnographic study that involved accompanying different shoppers right through the decision journey; in home deciding to embark on a DIY project right through to purchasing products in store. Use of eye tracking technology also revealed that the educational information at point of purchase, aimed at helping their decision, was being totally ignored.

Facilitated two day client workshops helped to turn all insights generated into a number of workstreams, including a total re-lay of the category in one key account, proven in control vs test research to have had a positive impact.

High Street Retailer

This client faced a challenge similar to that of many retailers; the complex relationships between offline and online channels. Culturally and structurally the two channels were not entirely integrated across the business. Whilst the team knew that there was overlap in shopper behaviour, they didn’t fully understand the nature of this relationship.

To gain this understanding we used three different techniques:

1. An online quantitative questionnaire to shoppers from the store’s own database, split between those living near to a store vs those who did not.

2. A quantitative “intercept” interview as customers left a store.

3. Qualitative focus groups, talking to both brand loyal shoppers and high category spenders.

Our key finding was of course that the channels have a truly symbiotic relationship. However, this interaction is very dependent on individual shopper circumstances.

The work directly led to a series of proposed initiatives across both channels aimed at enhancing shoppers’ experiences and maximizing sales opportunities, e.g. cross promotions, interactive pods in store, directing online shoppers to nearest store.

The findings were so powerful that the client also adopted a number of structural changes to their business, “hearing our research really enforced the fact that online and retail divisions HAD to break down barriers and work much more closely together.” Sharon Hodgson, Director, Shoppercentric.