Winning The Retail Purchase Decision – (Part 3) Who Is Influencing Your Shoppers To Buy Or Not Buy From You?

Each day retailers have the challenge of converting shoppers into buyers and brand marketers have the challenge of converting shoppers into buyers of their brand’s products.

In the first part of this blog, we discussed how purchase decisions are influenced in the marketplace and the pre-store research stages of the consumer decision process. In part 2, we discussed how shoppers choose a shopping destination to make a purchase.  In part 3, we focus on what has been called the “First Moment of Truth,” when a shopper makes the purchase decision in the store.

When examining the many influencing factors in making these purchases, we will examine the points of influence that can be controlled by the retailer, those that can be controlled by the brand marketer and other factors controlled only by the shopper.

The Shopper

A shopper entering the store brings with her a mix of variables that may or may not have been influenced by marketing prior to this shopping trip.  These include the shopper’s plan for the shopping trip, her mood, attitudes toward brands and products, value perceptions, shopping budget, time pressure to buy now, convenience orientation to buy now, brand loyalty, habitual grab & go purchase behavior, expected ease in finding her solution on this shopping trip and her level of involvement in this purchase (time spent researching, importance of specific product features, emotional/social involvement with product). 

These internal factors will have strong bearing on her final in-store decisions whether or not they can be influenced in store.  In order to win any shopper who is not an existing loyal user of a brand, they need to be disrupted, engaged and persuaded that a particular brand / product is worth buying on that trip.

The Shopping Experience

The retailer controls most of the shopping experience.  This is the experience between entering the store and the last 3 feet of the shelf where most decisions are made.  The retailer has selected to deliver either a shopping environment that is focused on making easy, quick purchase transactions or one focused on delivering multi-sensory and personal interactions in store and enhanced solutions that they take home from the store.  This shopping experience strategy can impact store loyalty, length of time spent in store, and often the number of items in the basket.

Transactional retailers include convenience stores, many grocery stores, club stores and many mass merchants.  Products are on shelves or racks and most shoppers find and buy products on their own.  If the only sales associate contact is at the checkout, a retailer likely falls in this category.

Retail experience stores create an environment that engage the senses and/or help shoppers find the unique solutions that are perfect for their needs.  Disney and Apple stores, Bass Pro Shops, and Fresh Market are good examples of this category.

Both retail formats can be effective, but they make different use of in-store experience influencers.  Tools to direct a shopper’s path, length of shopping trip and buying attitude include:

Atmosphere – Store design, store layout, visual merchandising, use of space, lighting, music, type of fixtures, width of aisles, breadth of assortment and amount of product on displays. For some, this translates to ease of shopping, for others it translates to pleasure of shopping.  Atmosphere is one key reason that shopper will spend over 3 hours shopping in a Bass Pro store vs. only a few minutes in a mass merchant’s fishing department.

Wayfinding – Overhead and in-aisle signing guides shoppers to easily find the products they are looking for.  Visual design of signs helps communicate information and give visual cues on the department and category of products.  Good wayfinding helps consumers find the products they came to buy.

Store Associates – A shopper’s interaction with store associates can be highly influential.  Educating sales associates on your brand and products can impact your sales.  Shoppers are drawn to associates who are friendly, knowledgeable and helpful.  Having trained sales associates available to help can boost product sales for recommended products and brands.

The Last 3 Feet

While the shopping experience will influence how long a shopper stays in a store and how they shop the store, the last 3 feet is where each purchase decision is made.  The impact of purchase influencers in this space may vary across product categories.  Tools that can be used to influence and win the purchase decision include:

Merchandising – Whether products are featured on end caps, a secondary display or use in-aisle POP signs to highlight a product’s features and benefits, gaining a differentiating visual element to engage a shopper in-store helps sell product.  Merchandising disrupts habitual shopping behavior and engages shoppers in evaluating the highlighted product.  The result can be brand switching or an impulse purchase.

Brochures – Product information / brochures that a consumer can pick up and read will allow a shopper to learn more about a product and why to buy it.  Mobile phone internet service has expanded access to information in store.  Displays and packaging with QR codes provide access to product information without the cost of printing in-store literature.

Product interaction – For many products, consumers want to touch, feel, and try a product before purchasing.  Tools such as in-store product demos and sampling allow the consumer to try the product.  Packaging with windows to see, touch, or operate the product, let the shopper know exactly what they are buying.  Creating these interactive experiences will help you sell your product.

Packaging – Product packaging is often the last source of product information to influence a decision.  If no prior information source has been engaged (on-line research, family recommendation, retail associate, POP sign, etc.), packaging plays a key role in many decisions.  For a lower-involvement product category, packaging may be the only source of information a shopper has when making a purchase decision.  Great packaging that engages consumers sells product.

Promotional offer – Consumers are drawn to value and special offers.  Offering a promotion gets your product noticed for two key reasons.  First, you change the value equation in a way that makes your product more attractive.  Second, POP communication of a promotion helps your product stand out on shelf.

Price communication – The price at shelf is the trigger to evaluate all the product information received up to this point.  The value will be assessed based on the features and benefits of a product vs. competitive products, the need to buy the product now, the desire to buy the product now and the convenience to buy the product now.  How a price is communicated at the shelf can influence purchase.  Pricing multiples (3/$10) has been proven to boost sales over individual price points ($3.33).  Coke and Pepsi are masters of this tactic.

Wild Cards – Outside Influence

No matter how prepared your store or brand is to sell shoppers on your products, there are outside influences that can trump your best efforts.  One of the most familiar is a shopper with kids.  A child who wants a particular product will often be successful in convincing a parent to buy that product.  Kids have unique talents in influencing purchases in store!

Another in-store influence beyond control is other shoppers in the aisle.  Another shopper is viewed as a credible source of product information.  I watched 3 shoppers being influenced by another shopper on which leaf blower to buy—I ended up buying the recommended blower too!  Other shoppers’ presence and social influence can impact what does or does not go into a basket.  What products a shopper wants to be seen buying will impact a trip…and in some product categories, drive sales online.

Smartphones and mobile internet access are rapidly influencing shopping in new ways.  Shopping apps and mobile searches for product reviews can change an in-store decision or even prompt a shopper to change stores to buy a product.  These tools can also be leveraged to encourage shoppers to check-in on their smartphone to receive in-store promotions or coupons.

Where To Prioritize Your Efforts

With all these variables, where should a brand marketer focus time and spending?  According to a 2011 study commissioned by Google with Shopper Sciences and IPG Mediabrands, the top sources used by shoppers when making purchase decisions are: 

Product packaging                                                    50%

Brochure/pamphlet read in store                                  49%

Talked with a salesperson or associate                         38%

Product signage/display                                             36%

Phone call with a customer service representative          31%

Sampled/experienced the product in a store                  22%

As the impact of these tactics will vary by product category, we recommend you test and establish best practices for your brand.  For most categories, product packaging, product signage/display and retail associates will play significant roles in the final purchase decision.

Winning at retail is an art and a science.  We always recommend starting your shopper marketing efforts with fresh insights to optimize your opportunity to have the biggest impact and best chance of winning vs. your competitors.

GrowthSpring Group is a market research, marketing strategy and innovation firm focused on accelerating your sales and profit growth. We help you identify new business growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans.

How Shoppers Choose A Store — (Part 2) Who Is Influencing Your Shoppers To Buy Or Not Buy From You?

In the first part of this blog, we discussed how purchase decisions are influenced in the marketplace and the pre-store research stages of the consumer decision process.  Part 2 will focus on choosing a shopping destination to make a purchase.

Shopping Destination Decision Factors
Once a consumer has researched a purchase, she will then consciously or unconsciously decide where she plans to make the purchase.  There are several factors that influence the decision of where to shop.  A simple representation of these factors is:

Store choice = Distance + Experience + Value + In-Stock Trust + New!

Let’s examine each of these factors:

Distance – the distance from where I am (now).  A familiar factor in deciding where to shop is a convenient location—with “convenient” defined as being close to where the shopper lives or will be located today.  The store chosen may not always be the closest to one’s home, but it may be conveniently located near the shopper’s workplace or kid's school--wherever you have to drive today.  A shopper will also bundle several shopping destinations into one trip making a drive to a distant shopping destination more convenient by visiting several stores in that area on the same trip. 

Getting a shopper to buy online removes the distance factor—increasingly brick and mortar retailers are trying to get consumers to buy online while researching products to avoid losing a sale to another retailer’s brick and mortar store.  Brands are launching ecommerce sites to lock in a sale during the research process and remove the store choice issue altogether.

Experience – The shopper’s prior experience with a store.  The shopper’s experience with a store and resulting loyalty can be a key factor in shifting the shopping destination from a conscious choice to an automatic choice.  Overtime, the shopper forms a habit of shopping in a preferred store for different items.  The experience components that influence this loyalty include:  a clean neat store, a store that is easy to shop, sales people that are available, friendly, helpful and knowledgeable and short lines at checkout.  (…plus:  good value and in-stock trust which we will cover separately).  A store that has a preferred experience for one product category may not be preferred for other product category, but shoppers may one-stop-shop for convenience rather than driving to shop in two stores for two different categories.

Value – Value for the money is a factor that can change week to week, so while it is part of a store’s experience, we consider it a separate factor in the store destination decision.  A store may have an everyday low price approach or a high-low promotional approach to pricing.  Consumers can be persuaded to switch stores based on an advertised price promotion.  At a reduced price point, a consumer may decide to switch from their preferred store to capture a lower price at an alternate store.  At some point in their evaluation, a shift in price shifts the value equation enough to favor the new destination. 

In-Stock Trust – Shoppers expect that most stores will have their preferred brands and products in stock—but they also learn which stores are more likely to carry a broad assortment of brands and products vs. those which just carry a few staples in a category.  Aldi and Kroger both sell groceries, but their assortments are significantly different.  Consumers will shop at stores that they trust to have the product they want in stock.  For a more involved purchase where a consumer has spent hours online researching a specific product model, they are also likely to research where they can find the product in stock. 

New! – New! is a factor that can trump all habitual shopper behavior.  It can be a new store that a consumer tries or news that prompts a special trip to a destination.  This can be a special event, an unusual sale, or an invitation from a friend to go shopping to a destination.  New! is a factor that can be harder to influence competitively, but can offer potential opportunity if leveraged well.

What can you influence?
So given these five factors that drive the shopping destination choice, what can a brand marketer do to help influence a decision to drive consumers to the stores of their retail partners?  

The best way to remove the distance factor is to gain distribution in all major retailers for your product category.  This is a worthwhile goal.  We previously noted that offering an ecommerce site of your own and/or gaining distribution on multiple retailer ecommerce sites can pre-empt the distance factor by completing the sale online. 

Influencing the store experience for the stores that distribute your product can be difficult.  Retailers want to control the in-store experience.  One key option here is to help educate that store’s sales representatives on your products.  Work with your retailers to identify their preferred method to have you participate in educating their staff.  Demos and in-store events are other opportunities to enhance the everyday shopping experience for your products.

Influencing the value equation can be done through a variety of price and non-price promotions.  Work with your retailers to create promotional advertising to engage and direct your brand’s shoppers to their stores.  Learn how to leverage social media and mobile apps to increase visibility of your brand value. 

Influencing the in-stock trust factor can be best achieved by gaining distribution of your most popular products with the key retailers in your category.  For many categories, also offering your products online allows you to sell your entire product line—and offer all the SKU’s that a brick and mortar store may not carry.  Store finders and Google search are increasingly being used by shoppers on mobile devices to find where to buy the products shoppers want.

Influencing the New! factor takes creativity on your part.  Work with your retailers to create news and excitement to drive traffic to these stores.  Department stores used to be the leaders in having weekly in-store events to attract shoppers.  What will you create?

Why is this store choice decision important? 
For a brand marketer, a shopper’s choice to shop in a store that does not stock your product is in effect a choice not to buy your product.  You can alter this outcome by gaining broad distribution in all stores that a shopper is likely to consider or you can work with your brand’s retailers to help attract shoppers to their stores.

In the third and last part of this blog, we will look at in-store influences that you can use to win the purchase decision at retail.

GrowthSpring Group is a market research, marketing strategy and innovation firm focused on accelerating your sales and profit growth.   We help you identify new business growth insights & opportunities and execute winning strategies & plans.   www.GrowthSpringGroup.com