We believe that Shopper Marketing is probably the most under-utilised and poorly invested area of many commercial organisations.In truth we never understand why this is as it should be a fundamental part of both your insight production and an integral part of your decision making throughout your commercial routine
There are many reasons however why it gets overlooked;
- Research methodologies can be expensive
- Getting retailer permission to study their shoppers both on and off line can be problematic
- Internal capability in research or trade marketing teams can be low
- Because it intersects many parts of the commercial decision process it appears to have no natural place to sit within the organisation
- It can be seen as complex and most clients say they simply don’t know where to start
And yet there is significant evidence that companies that employ Shopper Marketing grow significantly more than their competitors that don’t, up to 50% more!
But there are other additional benefits and these can include creating greater strategic relationships with your customers, having a competitive advantage over your competitors, better understanding of new product launches, tighter targeting of your shopper/consumer and more effective spend.
Has it died then?
In truth, some companies have absorbed Shopper thinking into other departments such as Category or Trade Marketing. Others claim that they have tried to research (at considerable cost) and not been able to make it stick internally.
It is surprising though that many of our clients are still asking for us to help them either to embed shopper thinking, or to upskill their commercial teams’ capability in the subject.
So its not dead at all but perhaps it needs a little help to resuscitate itself?
We can of course, and do help in this regard, but we also believe that there are a number of questions to get right as well to keep the patient alive
- Can you define the question that shopper thinking can help you resolve?
- Is your internal capability strong enough so that you can implement the thinking?
- Do you have the budget? Test and learn mentality (We are often told there is no budget to implement so test and learn in small groups can be beneficial and overcome budget restrictions)
- Do you have a roadmap to deliver the Shopper Marketing agenda? (see example fig. 1)
- Do you fully understand the drivers and barriers of your category and sub-category?
- Do you execute against the these?
This of course is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good place to start to allow your shopper thinking to draw breath
Fig. 1 Example capability framework
How we can help?
In addition to this framework we analyse your commercial process and instead of using Shopper thinking just for execution, we integrate its outputs throughout that process’s decisions and choices
So for example, Shopper thinking can help you identify business opportunities when you are considering how to grow but also help you identify channel opportunities by utilising shopping missions. It will affect your NPD in terms of packaging design as well as help you maximise how you execute in outlet or on-line.
This way of thinking secures shopper philosophy across your business and avoids it becoming a stand alone function that has little opportunity to affect major change and results in tactical short term activity
We believe Shopper Marketing continues to be and is arguably now more important than ever to achieve growth and greater effectiveness with your Marketing and Sales budget.
If any of the of the above resonates or alternatively and you have an individual question on Shopper Marketing drop us a line
The Capability Bridge