Nielsen and POPAI work out in-store media effectiveness

BrandWeek reports that sometime this week Nielsen Co. will make a major announcement regarding its effort to track the effectiveness of in-store marketing. This comes at more or less the same time as POPAI, the global organization for marketing at retail, plans to unveil their own study of the market which involved, "a proof-of-concept study of 400 shoppers who journeyed through four retail outlets-- 7-Eleven, BP, Dominick's and Walgreens--that explores the issue of engagement within the retail environment.POPAI's Marketing at Retail Initiative outfitted those consumers with micro-cameras to track their interaction with retail display materials."

POPAI examined several metrics including an impact ratio, which "measures in percentage the number of shoppers who passed the display and saw it", and an effectiveness ratio that, "describes (also in percentages) the number who passed the display. For example, if 10 shoppers pass a display, it gets a 100% effectiveness ratio score. If 10 pass it and three see it, it gets a 30% impact ratio score."

While I understand the difficulty of tracking shoppers as they walk the store, I really hope that one of these two groups will eventually come up with something better than outfitting shoppers with cameras. Even if shoppers get used to the devices, it still seems like a shopper wearing the device will behave differently than one without. If you knew your actions were being caught on camera, even if your face wasn't showing, would you pick up that box of condoms? What about anti-fungal medication? What about dandruff shampoo? Causing a shopper to stop and think instead of simply follow his or her list makes for unnatural behavior and consequently less accurate measurements.

Despite all of the technological gadgetry being used, it still seems like retail outlets could get much better data for the effectiveness of in-store marketing by running split-tests and comparing sales results. For example, take a chain store like Wal-Mart. If they install more aggressive in-store marketing for a particular product in one store but not in another, they could then compare sales in order to determine the effectiveness.

As usual, we come back to trying to figure out what "effective" means. For example, just because people pass by a display and see it, it can't automatically be called effective or ineffective. What matters the most to retailers and advertisers is whether or not noticing the ad spurred shoppers to make a purchase. What the POPAI study seems to measure more accurately is how attractive or eye-catching an ad may be, rather than how effective it will be at producing more sales. In theory, if the POPAI study was adopted as the industry standard, advertisers could just fire off ads full of bright colors and catchy visuals and as long as shoppers looked at them they could conclude they were effective and therefore charge more money. But where does the value for content come into play? An ad with less striking content may not attract as many eyeballs, but those that do notice it may be more likely to make a purchase based on its offer.

Tags: Nielsen, POPAI, retail marketing, in-store marketing