To me, there are two fundamental things to seek to understand the online shop. First, how does it differ from the physical store experience? Second, how is it the same? Clarity on these will be powerful in understanding how shopper marketing for online should be an extension of past thinking or totally different.
I think instinctively we all know that yes, it’s different but no, it’s not that different!
And the two interrelate. I was interested to learn at Retail Future strategies that a big use of mysupermarket.co.uk for shoppers was to build a shopping list that fitted a fixed, planned budget (and identified the cheaper banner) but then the actual shop was done in store.
Implicit in this is the need to compare. Too many companies are researching “online” using “online” agencies and specialists. But do these folk care about and understand the physical store? Do they relate one to the other? Reality is that for the most part, it’s the same shopper buying the same sorts of products for the same reasons. Of course.
Where we at Shopper Intelligence come in is we directly compare the two experiences using mostly similar metrics. We can show that in your categories. We know what’s the same and what’s different. We are greatly expanding our online coverage in 2018 (as well as adding more data on Discounters and Convenience). I invite you to take a look at the data we have that could quickly and cheaply help you make those big investment decisions…..by making the comparison.
