TNS Retail & Shopper

Don't Talk At All! (Or, Eliza Goes Shopping!)

December 26, 2008 - by Herb Sorensen, Ph.D., Global Scientific Director, TNS Retail and Shopper

E-Mail: herb.sorensen@tns-sorensen.com

In the Broadway musical "My Fair Lady," Eliza Doolittle has some complaints against her suitor, Freddy Eynsford-Hill:

Words! Words! I'm so sick of words!

- - - - -

Don't waste my time, Show me!
Don't talk at all! Show me!
- - - - -

Say one more word and I'll scream!
Please don't "expl'ine," Show me! Show me!
- - - - -

Show me now!

Strolling through the aisles of a supermarket, one might get the impression that Freddy is a guru to the CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) of both retailers and their suppliers. Indeed, words, words, words! Everyone in marketing seems to think that words are the best way to communicate.with shoppers. So, here we have a milieu, rife with at least a couple million words, and a marketing machine whose prime concern is what words to use for POS communication, whether of packaging - the number one POS communication - or a free-standing display, end-aisle display, or maybe one of the advanced digital variety. Not to make too fine a point of it, but here is what you are up against in trying to communicate at retail:

Clutter is an understatement, and words are seriously swamped in this environment. Instead, colors and shapes drive shopper recognition and communication. It is less about cognition and rationality and more about intuition and emotion.

My esteemed colleague, Siemon Scamell-Katz of TNS Magasin explains:

We have always relied on words to help us sell in the belief that creative wordsmithing is influential. But it is not. The average grocery shopper reads only around 9 [texts] in a 20 minute shop. Our eye tracking research shows us that we rely far more, not only on the visual color and shape cues to recognise the products that we normally buy, but also on the color and shape cues that we have learned signify the retailer’s promotions to trigger a promotional selection.

In a study some time ago, Andersen Consulting looked at the contents of shoppers’ carts as they left the stores that they had been shopping. Over 50% of the products that were purchased on promotion, the shopper had not realised were promoted.

Maybe, as we study the real behaviour of shoppers, rather than listening too much to what they think that they do, we will rely less on myth-based shopper marketing techniques and more on fact-based design.

For example, concerning shape, which of the following silhouettes are of the liqueur, Kahlua?

 

And how about the shape of the label on the Kahlua bottle?  Which is the Kahlua label?

You can check a photo at the bottom of this Views, but even people who might never use Kahlua are likely to recognize the correct profile and label as C and A respectively.

The point of all this is that real communication in the store may very well be devoid of words. The Kahlua example simply illustrates how, through long exposure and association of particular shapes with a brand, shoppers can come to recognize the brand intuitively from its shape. The same is true for color, where Coke is associated with red and Pepsi is associated with blue, as examples.

Before we look at some other product examples, let's look at the larger issue of whole areas of the store, which can be styled/restyled in what we refer to as category reinvention. Here's some examples:

Both of these category reinventions evoke distinct emotional experiences tied to something less mundane than the typical supermarket. On the left, the shopper is nudged into the framework of a butcher shop while on the right the mind-set of the coffee house is sought. These are good examples of the use of something more than words to convey the message and experience appropriate to the category.

Obviously, product labels will have words, but the spirit of the category reinvention and the examples of the brands cited can be carried through with brand and item reinventions:

As noted in an earlier Views, purchase decisions are multidimensional, and words are a weak tool, alone, in communicating with shoppers. Colors, shapes and iconic images are powerful, and can contribute to an experiential sale, as distinguished from the more limited verbal sale. And here's your Kahlua:

The shopper in the recession

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

As economic pessimism tightens its grip on British shoppers' purses, Siemon Scamell-Katz, TNS Magasin, shows that an understanding of shopper behaviour is indispensable for manufacturers and retailers dealing with the implications

The shift to cheaper brands

Shoppers' need to save money has led to many switching to cheaper brands or own-brand, particularly for commodity products.

This makes it increasingly important to offer - and communicate - value for money.

Visibility, in terms of shelf location and stand-out on the shelf, is more important than ever. It's therefore vital to understand the visual cues that your shoppers use in decision making.

Increased usage of the discounter channel

Shopping dynamics are very different in this channel: very poor retail environments make products and categories harder to see, with poor adjacencies, poor merchandising and poor in-store marketing.

Understanding how these stores are shopped is the first step towards success within them.

A move from the convenience channel to multiples and from multiples to discounters

More and more shoppers are turning to the discounters for all their regular shopping, while a majority is now using them as alternatives to convenience stores, doing top-up shops for perishable items.

Brands should reassess their channel strategies and review where their channel priorities are. What type of shopping missions are multiples losing to discounters in your categories?

Fewer, more planned shopping occasions

We're seeing the start of a reversal of the erstwhile trend towards smaller basket shops, particularly for those with families: UK shoppers may adopt a mission emerging in the US, the monthly bulk shopping trip.

With funds more tightly controlled, shoppers are pre-planning, thus reducing impulse opportunities. Brands need to know how to ‘get on the list' through proper evaluation of decision making, both in-store or earlier.

They also need to understand the circumstances in which true impulse occurs and what triggers it.

Location - now even more important

The rising cost of fuel means location becomes more important: the switch from convenience is probably due to price perception.

The convenience operators need to make the most of their location advantage by changing shoppers' perception of their prices; for them the question is how to use the store environment more effectively to communicate their price parity with the multiples.
In this context, discounters tend to have location advantages too.

Ensuring availability

Availability is always an issue, of course, but in tough times shoppers are more likely to do without in non-commodity categories. On-shelf brand availability is therefore even more important, for brands and retailers alike.

Sustainability issues

TNS figures show the biggest and most consistent fall in organic food and drink sales for a decade - by nearly a fifth from their all-time peak in February 2008.

Shoppers are saving money and maintaining their ethical sensibilities by switching to free-range and sustainable products. Unlike in the 1990s recession, sustainability is therefore likely to remain important.

Taxation

Watch out for government taxation on easy targets - for example, in Australia there has been a massive increase in tax on ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages - to fill the looming hole in the budget.

The internet

Web sales are soaring and will continue to do so as shoppers save fuel and enjoy 24/7 shopping.

In response, some big-name brands are considering manufacturing bulk packs of household products for sale exclusively online: 50 or more toilet rolls and supersize packs of nappies.

What are your shoppers doing on the Internet?

Selling vs. Order-taking

December 4, 2008 - by Herb Sorensen, Ph.D., Global Scientific Director, TNS Retail and Shopper
E-Mail: herb.sorensen@tns-sorensen.com

Any sales manager can clearly distinguish between the sales person who understands both the customer and the wares available to offer, and efficiently matches the two, as contrasted with the order-taker, who may be affable, but simply fills an order form, with little understanding of either the customer, or possibly the merchandise being offered. The sales person facilitates the thought process that leads to closing the sale - "close early and close often" - while the order taker plays a more passive role.

In understanding what needs to happen in shopping, and is happening, among retailers and brand suppliers that want to sell, it is helpful to review how the industry at large became so passive (order-taking) in managing the sales process. What is common on the selling room floor today (passivity,) was not always this way.

One hundred years ago, retailers tended to play a far more active role in selling to their customers.

This was in the days before self-service, and personal selling was the rule. Of course, self service introduced massive efficiencies to retailing that benefited shoppers, retailers and their suppliers. In the place of personal selling, a vast commercial machine was created that relied on mass advertising to replace the "personal" element of the sales process. Within the stores themselves, the whole concept required shoppers to largely be responsible for "selling" themselves.

Now there is great interest in thinking of shoppers in the store as an "audience," to take the place - at least partially - of the mass audience of television, that has become so fragmented. Unfortunately, what was lost 100 years ago - the "personal" in selling - is given short shrift in returning to the store. Instead, there is underway a laborious effort to adapt the commercial communication machine to the in-store experience. This is a ham-handed and less than effective approach, driven in part by a failure to recognize what was lost 100 years ago, coupled with the fact that probably few people in the enterprise have any real personal selling skills today.

However, there are real opportunities to developing winning retail and supplier organizations based on personal selling principles. We will first consider the inexorable force of technology on the selling process. But it would be VERY wrong to consider that this is all about technology. The personal seller will always thrive, whatever the tools at hand.

If you consider the actual elements of the selling process, online retailing has become far more like the historical, traditional, personal selling than is the typical offline in-store experience. When you show up at your favorite online stores you are immediately greeted by name, and ushered immediately into the store's best space for you - the opening screen. Moreover, knowing you quite well, the online merchant immediately offers you merchandise, based on your past browsing and purchasing, that you are likely interested in. (OK, some of them are still dumber than dirt. :>) And the path to completing the sale is short! One click, two or three. The first rule of personal selling is: close early and close often.

I hope you will not dismiss my assertion that online retailing is showing the way. This doesn't mean that retailing is going to become all about online. Real retailing is always about personal selling. The people who ended up owning the stores and merchandise over the past 100 years are more merchants than retailers - retailing moved to the television. OK, now I know I am straining some of you, but this is important.

We already see the advance guard of online moving into the store. One of the best of these is the Modiv Shopper, a handheld device that you grab as you come into the store. The device allows a

two way personal communication between the shopper and the retailer, very much like online, but so much better than online because the shopper is immersed in the offline retail store with the merchandise all around them. This means that as the retailer makes relevant offers, at the right time and place ("close early and close often") the shopper can complete transactions, even scanning and bagging the items. The result is a much faster sale, which, if you've been paying attention, means a lot more of them!

Of course MediaCart represents a much more extensive deployment of the internet within the offline retail store, but Infosys and others are aiming for wider, lighter deployment, such as with the shopper's mobile phone. (Think of the mobile phone as a "mouse" that gives you access to the cloud of communication that envelops you at nearly all times.)

Now the point of all this is not to go nuts over the internet in stores, but to recognize if people deploying technology in the stores don't learn from online retailers, they are dullards indeed. Successful online just had to get personal, really fast. So the question is, why wait for technology in order to incorporate "personal selling" into your own branding or retailing program? It's not about technology, it's about selling! There will be an upcoming Views titled "Don't Talk at All!" which may give you some ideas. :>)

"Average" Quicksand

December 2, 2008 - by Herb Sorensen, Ph.D., Global Scientific Director, TNS Retail and Shopper
E-Mail: herb.sorensen@tns-sorensen.com

What is the life experience of the average human being? Other than that they are born and die, it gets pretty complicated. That's why we don't usually ask questions like this: we recognize a certain absurdity in the concept. And yet, lot's of absurd answers are available for less than insightful questions about shopping. For example, how long is the average shopping trip? This seems like a legitimate question.

In fact, we have been thinking about this question for years, partially because classifying trips by their "length" has been done for more years than I have been in shopper research. Of course when speaking of trip length, usually people are referring to how long in minuutes. However, when we began measuring actual shopper paths, the door was opened to measuring the distance they traveled as the length of the trip. Maybe it wouldn't be too great of a stretch to consider length in relation to the number of items they purchased, or the amount of money they spent.

The number of items purchased would make a very convenient (and accurate) measure of length. In fact, in related studies of the checkout process, we find that the number of items has an obvious impact on the length of time required for checkout, with some variable time for the length of the queue and constant overhead, the final payment, etc. So it would seem that knowing the relation between trip length and the number of items purchased would be helpful.

First the good news:

This shows that there is indeed a very high correlation between the length of the shopping trip (at a supermarket) and the number of items purchased. At least when this is expressed as the mode of the trip length. (You may recall that the mode is the expression of the average as the most common value.)

However, this poorly represents, in my opinion, the underlying reality:

Each differently colored line in this curve represents the distribution of shoppers' trip lengths for that specific number of items. (the color code to the number of items is in the key at the right.) Here we see that a single item requires a very few minutes, most commonly, to purchase, although it could require quite a few minutes, and as the number of items increases, the variation in the amount of time required, grows quite rapidly. What is going on here may be easier to recognize if we look only at the three average numbers of items:

• The mode, or the most common number of items purchased, ONE!!!
• The median, half the shoppers buy more, and half buy less, five.
• The mean, the arithmetic average of all trips, twelve.

I hope this isn't getting too confusing. In the mode, median and mean of the bullet points we are referring to the number of items purchased. In the trip duration, we are referring to the minutes required to accomplish a trip purchasing that many items - which varies tremendously.

Surprised that a 20 minute trip might buy only one item? Maybe it is a spouse accompanying someone else buying a lot, but they themselves only bought a soft drink. And someone carpooling kids to an event, might easily rush in and buy 5 different candy bars in three minutes.

The point of this Views is to show how "average" can be very misleading in understanding the shopping experience. It is just too easy to have a stereotypical image in our minds of what shopping is. The very worst distortion is to assume that what doesn't match our stereotype doesn't matter. This is virtual quicksand.

Post note:

In making this Views longer than usual, I am reminded of Lord Cumberland's remark about The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: " Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?"

If you will bear with me, I mentioned near the beginning of this views that trip length could also be reasonably measured in dollars. I have not done so in this case, but given the focus in earlier Views on the relation of seconds per dollar to sales efficiency, it may be worth noting that many supermarkets are performing in the 60 seconds per dollar range. Given something like $2 for the average item, we should expect something like 2 minutes for each item purchased. These are reasonable ballpark figures. But notice that the mode for each number of items is about twice this number. For example, why is the mode for 5 items 23 minutes, when efficiency measures suggest it should be more like 10 - 15 minutes? Further, half the purchases for 5 items in this particular store took longer than 23 minutes.

I cite this as further evidence that there is a massive amount of time being wasted in stores, time that can either be given back to the shopper - a huge competitive advantage, or some portion diverted to additional sales.