Jul
30
Why Agencies Should Care About Shopper Marketing And The Path To Purchase
Filed Under Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics
You’ve all heard me discuss the importance of Shopper Marketing and the Path-to-Purchase in the past. The old sofa-to-store philosophies of old just aren’t holding strong. So I was smiling the whole way through when reading Joel’s post (CRO at the ARF) about why Shopper Marketing matters – especially to agencies.
Generally, media agencies have not been great at understanding shopper marketing or retail in general. There are some notable exceptions in the like of Publicis ARC, Satchi X and David Sommer and his group over at Mediaedge. For most, until recently, it just hasn’t really been part of their purview, falling in the larger pool of 245 Billion in trade/promo spending. That has been changing recently and folks in the media biz have to start paying a lot more attention, if not for anything than Joel’s #2 of his top 10:
#2: Shopper marketing offers immediacy and reach and is projected to be the fastest growing part of the media mix over the next few years. Wal-Mart offers a bigger audience than any prime time show. Target is up there too. In the era of fragmented media audiences, delivering a huge audience, right at the “first moment of truth” should not be ignored.
Yes, Shopper Marketing, although fuzzy in what it includes, is growing faster than both Internet and DOOH. Some projections put it in at over $30+ Billion by 2012.
For those of you who don’t know what Shopper Marketing is, Joe answers that very question in the comments based on what the ARF’s councils (which are made up of folks from companies like Unilever) deem it to be:
The ARF shopper insights council leadership agrees that shopping begins well before someone enters the store. Whenever a person begins a process intended to end in purchase, they have started down the path to purchase and are shoppers.
Some of my favorites in Joel’s post:
#3: What people care about as shoppers is different. As shoppers, people are in action mode. They are making many decisions during the course of a shopping trip, filling their cart with diverse products, taking only seconds per decision. When people are shopping they are motivated by different messages than they are as consumers (more price-related and solution-based). Shoppers want a highly shoppable environment which is tricky because 99% of the products in the store are irrelevant to the shopper’s mission on a given trip.
#4: Shopper marketing gives you unique opportunities to be relevant. Retailers have different store formats that are geared to serve their local clientele. Some formats match the local ethnic concentration. How will your brand presentation be customized in each store format?
#7: Advertising agencies must master shopper marketing to have a complete offering: those who do not offer shopper marketing services will be viewed as incomplete in their messaging and media planning approaches.
#8: Shopper insights and consumer insights are different things. Consumer insights study the relationship and expectations a person has regarding brand alternatives. Shopper insights study how people put preferences into action in the context of replenishment needs, search for solutions, promotional offers, and the retail environment. The research tools, questionnaires, and mental models are all different.
#9: Studying the path to purchase offers a new approach to media planning. Some product categories are characterized by brands being decided on before entering the store (e.g. cigarettes, soft drinks, iPhones). For them, shopper marketing is less important and off-premise is more important. Other brands are chosen in-store mostly (store brands, lower priced alternatives, impulse items) and shopper marketing is a must.
One thing I feel Joel doesn’t touch on is understanding/communicating “What Retail Is” beyond the typical explanation of a retail store carrying 100,000 SKUs. Retail may be different things for very different industries. For instance, Bars, nighclubs, Convenience Stores, Hotels and the like may not be seen as retail for Unilever but they are most definitely known as “retail” to the likes of Diageo, Coors and Patron. In the same way, a pharmaceutical company may view a Doctor office as “retail” (while you may buy drugs at a pharmacy, you make the purchase decision at and with the Doctor). I just listed off a couple Billion dollar companies/industries that may not typically be recognized in ARF shopper marketing philosophy but the philosophy of Path-to-Purchase/Shopper Marketing applies in the same way.
What I did find fascinating is that while Joel’s own definition of Shopper Marketing states that Shopper Marketing begins WAY before the store, all of the focus for insight in his top ten is generally at the retail environment/location.
My feeling is that Shopper Marketing as a MEDIUM and MEDIA need to connect both retail and the Path-To-Retail more suscinctly (read: consistency in messaging and creative/promotional handoff) if it is to mature as a science and an art.
Great job though Joel! Keep it up. The article can be found here
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2 Responses to “Why Agencies Should Care About Shopper Marketing And The Path To Purchase”
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The consumer market place has been uber-categorized by the emergence of the digital era.
Before Internet, there were say nine planets of consumerism. Now, with the emergence of the Internet and zeitgeist shift of all marketing thereby, those nine planets have become almost secondary to the discovery of 9,000,000,000 others that operate as unique, niche-serving market places that demand the attention of consumers and marketers alike because of their proven efficiency and profitable business models.
Like automotive retail, all retail consumerism is changing. Marketers will either recognize the shift and turn their respective centers of commerce into Amusement Parks (business models that invite every exploration that amuses, and markets captively thereby), or face certain demise.
I, in fact, spoke on this exact subject to an audience of dealers and industry know-it-alls at a 2003 NADA event in New Orleans. Dealers just couldn’t get it. They refused to imagine the challenge of adjusting to massive change coming the industry’s way. And, as we have all witnessed, the end result has been an attrition of the dealer ecosystem so drastic that the citizens are paying the cost to save the industry.
If you and Joel are well enough respected ambassadors, then let’s hope the agencies and marketers heed advice better than the dealers did. Big change is coming to the industry. Ad buys won’t make sense if they don’t work, NOW! And, most traditional agencies and their professionals, are not visionary enough to realize this. The idea that a brand can anticipate its greatest position 90 days before a campaign is launched is a disproved one after the zeitgeist shift. Advancements of this digital age allow for sudden, viral-like messages about brand experiences, and the standard modus operandi of the industry will need to adapt.
Thank you for your valuable insights and leadership as it pertains to the DOOH space.
I like to take a frame into the audience when speaking at industry engagements. I have the crowd pass around the frame and look through it. At the end, I explain that the idea of perspective is dynamic – that even as we passed around that plain ole’ picture frame and looked through it there were 359 different ways it could be looked through. And, that’s Per Axis!
If what you say, and what the like of you and Joel and I envision is correct, then this ad and marketing industry had better start turning the frame – in a feverish fashion.
D. Rawls
VP Sales, Marketing & Sponsorships
AH Media Corp.
404.661.7767 Direct
http://www.DigitalAdView.com
http://www.AHMediaCorp.com
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