If consumer goods companies invest in shopper marketing based on the belief that 70 percent of the buying decision happens at the shelf, they may want to look into recent research conducted by Campbell Soup:
“…CPG companies practicing Shopper Marketing should think differently about where they invest to influence shoppers. Why? Most important buying decisions occur before the actual store visit.”
Research conducted by Campbell Soup summarized in this recent CPG Matters article suggests that traditional in-store shopper marketing may need a tune up. Their methodology was nothing short of comprehensive, examining “U.S. adults in eight different phases of research, including eye tracking, in-store observation, online interviews, in-home ethnography, in-store interviews, EEG (electro-encephelograph) monitoring and mobile eye tracking.”
One of the factors affecting traditional shopper marketing is the nature of the in-store environment, which you could say helped give rise to shopper marketing to begin with:
“… CPG faces a significant challenge to gain attention in-store. Shoppers are so overloaded by visual stimuli that their eyes de-select 99% of what they see; of the remaining 1%, shoppers consciously process just one-twentieth of what they encounter, scientific literature shows.”
Campbell’s research uncovered another issue at work; the consumer’s path to purchase is multidimensional and includes “pivotal moments of influence,” most of which happen outside the store. Thus shopper marketers have a mandate to understand “where, when and how decisions are made” to make the most of these investments.
For a lot of consumers, this happens “on the go” while increasingly spending time on social media sites like Facebook. Consumers face upwards of 3,000 marketing messages daily according to some sources, challenging mass media as much as Campell found shopper marketing to influence purchase decisions. Direct digital marketing, where brands connect directly with consumers via opt in and social media channels, is often the answer. It’s a trend gaining a lot of traction as noted in this recent post.
Teradata offers consumer goods a proven path to the types of direct consumer relationships that will come to define best in class leaders, bringing unmatched scale, integration and analytical capabilities needed to harness the value embedded in a growing source of Big Data. For those that fail to adapt their shopper marketing efforts accordingly, “a lot of effort and resources can be wasted trying to convert shoppers at times and places where they’re unlikely to be converted.”
