FMCG

After extensive research with my kids (yes, they are over the age of majority!), I can report that dating has remarkable similarities with in-store marketing. Not convinced? Then read on. Step 1. Getting noticed Wow, a lot of pre-nightclub effort goes into looking right. Choosing the right outfit, sorting the hair, doing the make-up, to name just

An “addiction” could be defined as something that is pleasurable short term but you know is damaging long run.  I think we would all concur that promotions risk being exactly that. There is a critical problem here, for me, in how we assess promotions, even in terms of pure economics. We drop the price by

I hear more and more often about the need for shopper marketers and category managers to think about shopper missions as the underlying construct for their plans. I totally agree. Brand managers think “consumer needs” to build their thinking. Shopper mission is a kind of the shopping equivalent. Of course, at the macro level, this

There is a hunger in our frenetic business world for simplicity. But any researcher knows that the human mind is incredible and impossibly complex. Any understanding of decisions and attempted prediction of behaviour requires skill, experience, several different research techniques, and a lot of judgement. There are no simple answers. It’s tempting for any of

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

This book and the thinking within it is gaining a great deal of traction across the packaged goods Industry. If you haven’t read it, my layman’s summary is that panel data meta-studies over time show that it's far more powerful (effective) to increase penetration (ie recruit more buyers) than to try to enhance loyalty as

Different purveyors of methodology place differing emphasis on different types of shopper learning. To us, its all about understanding clearly current changes in shopper behaviour.  First, you need to know what shoppers are doing (how their choices are changing). Then you need to know why they are doing this. One without the other won’t get

I don’t mean they need to be more cuddly and approachable as people (although that might be nice!) I mean that the researcher needs to be able to put themselves in the shoes of the other guy. The competitor. One of shopper research’s critical functions is to represent the external world to the business. And

In the 1950s your and my grandmothers (not often grandfathers I suggest) would set off on foot or by bus with kids in the pram and walk up and down the local shopping street in the rain going from shop to shop to buy (a few) provisions for the next day or two. Like so

There are quite a few ways that time and money get eaten unproductively in shopper research. More than one company researches the same thing Small-scale projects are inherently inefficient Too much project time spent re-inventing the wheel We like to think at Shopper Intelligence we have made a significant step towards a more cost-efficient model