Rethinking the concept of consumer intent

Back in 2005, we did an article over on the WireSpring blog about calculating the ROI for digital signs, and started out by describing an "awareness funnel" that took walked through a shopper's first moment of truth with an item -- from becoming aware that the product existed to actually purchasing it. It looked like this:

              / \
             /   \ <- SALES
            /_____\
           /       \ <- IDENTIFICATION
          /_________\
         /           \ <- PREFERENCE
        /_____________\
       /               \ <- PERCEPTION
      /_________________\
     /                   \ <- RECALL
    /_____________________\
   /                       \ <- RECOGNITION
  /_________________________\
 /                           \ <- AWARENESS
/_____________________________\

As I was reviewing some old blog articles from Advertising Age recently, I came across another description of the same concept, this time from the perspective of consumer intent. As the article's author Troy Young notes, "Intention is one or two steps before purchase and far removed from 'unaware.' Brand advertisers love intention, naturally, but the real magic is the part before intention -- moving a consumer from being 'unaware' to being 'predisposed'.... What the data show is this: In creating value for brands, we need to look beyond 'intent to buy' and toward 'intent to engage' with a brand message." Consequently, his funnel looks roughly like this:

              / \
             /   \ <- SALES
            /_____\
           /       \ <- ??
          /_________\
         /           \ <- ?
        /_____________\
       /               \ <- INTENTION
      /_________________\
     /                   \ <- PREDISPOSED
    /_____________________\
   /                       \ <- AWARE
  /_________________________\
 /                           \ <- UNAWARE
/_____________________________\

While Young states that "the real magic is the part before intention", from where I'm standing, I'd say the real magic is in fact after it, when you complete the 2-stage process, whatever it is, that converts a mere shopper into an actual buyer. Of course, Young notes that such a process will only happen when the purchase actually demands a decision - nobody's going through 6 or 7 steps to buy a can of soda or a pack of gum. But I guess that's the difference between a brand-focused guy like Young and a sales-focused guy like me: for the brand-centric, building the consumer psyche to the point where there's real intent to buy is the biggest challenge, and thus garners the lion's share of ad funds. That's why we see so many commercials for stuff, and none of them actually say "look, just buy me already!" We're instead finessed into wanting, desiring whatever it is -- a car, the latest clothes, a new computer. But very few actually take the direct route and say "buy me now." I suppose it's because unless the viewer has an immediate need for the product, the message is lost and there's no "residual" value. With a brand-centric message, on the other hand, each commercial, print ad, banner on the 'net or other marketing device builds on previous messages, essentially assuming in advance that the viewer doesn't want to make the purchase right now, but might need to in the future.

My funnel, on the other hand, is more heavily weighted towards the top. I assume that, being a good brand marketer, the product's already going to be in the hearts and minds of my viewers. My job is to figure out how to turn all of that goodwill and built-up brand recognition into an actual sale of the product. That's one of the reasons I like digital signage so much - it's hard to find a more direct route to shoppers, or a better place to put a message like "hey you! buy me right now!" -- in as elegant and beautiful a way as possible, of course.

Tags: in-store marketing, marketing at-retail, digital signage, shopper marketing

Does the retail clothing store experience continue to fail?

I love the Adaptive Path blog. The posters there are super-smart, entertaining, and always capable of coaxing an insightful argument out of even mundane content. Julia's recent post about the retail experience is no exception, and she laments that dressing rooms are still inadequate (a sentiment that echoes Paco Underhill's own observation in Why we Buy). But is it fair to say that the retail clothing store experience continues to fail? After all, Julia points out in her own post that:

The layout of the store tends to provide more open space for shoppers than it did just five years ago. Even in department stores, gone are the days of being squeezed in between the sale rack and some soulless sweater display with a half dressed mannequin. It seems there are more boutiques focused on one style or catering to a well thought out target audience than ever before. There are places for people to sit, often with those nice little tables with magazines. I’ve noticed this in nearly every U.S. city I’ve visited this year from Chicago, to DC, to Santa Fe.

So yeah, dressing rooms might still suck, but given the number of things that universally required improvement just a few years ago, it seems like retailers have been paying attention to customers and actually implementing many of the suggested changes. I agree that if retailers can accomplish so much it seems odd that they would fall short of addressing this common gripe, especially since some of the other recent fixes (like recent whole-store planogram changes at Macy's and JCPenney's) must have been much more costly and complex to implement. But even for an occasional shopper like me, the overall state of affairs inside the typical clothing or department store has improved noticeably over the past 5 years, and is far from what I'd consider failing.

Now remind me I said that in three or four weeks when I'm at the mall during the height of holiday shopping season ;)

Tags: retail design, in-store marketing, store experience

A two-step test for adding new in-store marketing systems

Actually, the way George Anderson, the article's author pitches it, perhaps the question is "which is the right approach?" It seems that with the proliferation of new retail media, and the newfound acceptance these strategies have found, execs have started to decide that the question is no longer whether to advance an in-store marketing strategy, but rather which strategy they should choose. (Indeed this was the crux of an argument put forward by Marc Babej and Tim Pollak from Reason Inc. in a recent Forbes commentary article).

Getting back to the RetailWire article, though, Anderson asks two questions: first, are shopping carts offer potentially valuable media space, and second, where are the best opportunities in terms of technology for retailers and marketers to influence consumer purchases with shopping carts?

As is often the case with a RetailWire BrainTrust article, there are dozens of comments posted beneath the article, many of which are pretty insightful. A lot of them are also target-specific, focusing on the potential benefits and drawbacks of advertising on shopping carts (my two cents: a nice, but not killer, idea for static ads; digital stuff will never work). But the better comments dive into a theme that I've noticed becoming more common in recent months, especially as retail digital signage systems have really taken off.

Specifically, people tend to get wrapped up in one particular medium or message conveyance method, instead of looking at the entire store as a cooperative system. Even professional marketers with years of experience have been known to get easily distracted by the new/cool/shiny thing, and deploy it without thinking of whether it makes the whole environment any better. So here's my wholly-anecdotal, two-second test for guessing whether a new form of in-store media is going to be a positive or negative addition to your environment:

1. Does it put the message on the same shelf as the product? Retail media is local, and I mean really local media. You have two or three seconds to impart your message at best, and then maybe 5-7 seconds of retention after that. So if your message isn't within 10 seconds of the product, its value starts to decline rapidly. The solution: keep messages as close to the product as possible, and understand that the further away you move them, the less good they'll do.

2. Does it compete with or complement other nearby media like POP displays, posters and endcap setups? Walk into a supermarket and you're bombarded by messages, and that new snazzy addition is going to quickly become part of the background noise if it has to compete with messages for similar products (or even different messages for the same product!), and other clutter nearby. The solution? Get rid of all other forms of in-store marketing. Just kidding. Since that's obviously not viable, the real solution is to create integrated campaigns. If Keebler will be advertising 3 different products in your store this month, the ads for each should play off of each other. If colors need to be different, then shapes should be the same. The logos should be similarly positioned, and so on. If the campaign will feature floor-standing displays and spots on digital signs, they should look similar to each other. That way, even if one part of the message is displayed far away from the product, the customer will be primed when she encounters the other component that is nearby.

If your can't answer "yes" to both questions above, then you may want to give a bit more thought to your new media approach before deploying it to your stores, since chances are that it will not perform as expected.

Tags: in-store marketing, retail marketing

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

P&G to commit $2B to retail-marketing efforts

As Advertising Age announced a few days ago,

Procter & Gamble Co. is preparing to give some $2 billion in retail-marketing funds a seat at the same table as advertising.

The company is partially consolidating its marketing groups to put retail-marketing strategy under the same marketing directors who oversee brand teams instead of under the group that manages the sales force. Once the new system is introduced, general managers or marketing directors who find a brand responds better to trade marketing than consumer marketing will be able to shift more funds in-store. This should make for a more genuinely discipline-agnostic P&G.

The move aims to answer questions that long have dogged package-goods marketers: who should control the tens of billions of dollars spent on trade promotion -- often the largest part of the marketing budget -- and how to make those dollars work in the same strategic plan as advertising and consumer promotion.

Analysts estimate that Procter and Gamble spends over $2 billion a year on trade marketing, which is about twice as much as the entire digital signage industry generates right now. Of course, if you were to throw in all POP displays and merchandising the market is quite a bit larger, but a $2B addition is still extremely significant.

While there's no reason to think that 100% of that amount will be channeled in store -- after all, there are lots of other techniques like direct mail, online and event/promotion that could be successful -- given P&G's past indications that in-store marketing techniques (like digital signage) are becoming increasingly important it's probably safe to bet that we'll see some new things in-store from them (literally).

Here's the real question, though. If P&G is successful with this new plan, how/when will we find out about it? And will there be a cascade effect, where other major CPGs suddenly jump in and start redirecting large portions of their advertising budgets?

Tags: P&G, in-store marketing, marketing at retail

Want to engage customers? Here are 12 things NOT to do

Have you read C.B. Whittemore's "Flooring the Consumer" blog yet? Whittemore bills the blog as one focused on, "improving the store experience, particularly in flooring," but believe me, she always has some great insights that are applicable to the majority of retail situations. For example, in a post from a few days ago Whittemore laments the sad state of Wal-Mart, its stores, and its relative indifference to the customer experience, particularly in relation to Target, who has gone to great lengths to keep their own megastores fresh, attractive and inviting. Rather than create a to-do list for errant companies hoping to find their way back to delivering positive customer experiences, Whittemore instead delivers a top-12 what NOT to do list:

1. Don't allow your stores to become dingy, un-cared for, dated or unpleasant.
2. Don't create an environment that burdens your consumer.
3. Don't become complacent and think that good enough is OK.
4. Don't fall in love with expansion and lose sight of existing stores and customers.
5. Don't understaff your stores.
6. Don't focus completely on being the lowest priced retailer.
7. Don't be a schmuck.
8. Don't lose touch with the marketplace.
9. Don't have tunnel vision.
10. Don't ever underestimate the power of quality, convenience and customer service.
11. Don't ever alienate your core customer base.
12. Don't wing it!

Obviously she adds some critical insight to each element of the list, but for that you'll have to read the whole article :) While all of these points are great, my favorite is #12, which seems to be overlooked so often. Rather than just guess at what might work in-store, or implement a huge plan based on a single "great idea" from a company insider, more companies need to implement more a exacting implement -> test -> analyze results strategy to figure out what works. Integrate customer/shopper comments, query in-store staff to gain insight into sales floor techniques, and look for untapped resources and inefficient processes. Above all, be willing to try things that might fail, but also be willing to change them once you've recognized that they actually are failing.

Tags: marketing at retail, in-store marketing, store experience

Will digitally-based customer assistance help solve store customer service woes?

That's exactly the question that the latest BrainTrust Query over at Retail Wire is trying to answer, and as usual, the participants in the discussion have some great insights to share. Using examples like Experticity's kiosk-based remote assistance platform, or the 3D avatars employed by some other self-service technology companies, Laura Davis-Taylor posits that there's a need to engage the customer at a point when she is making an active investment in learning about a product/service, which is an important part of the sales process to be sure.

The upside of such programs is that by relying on artificial intelligence and a centralized customer support staff, retailers can lower costs while improving the service experience by being able to instantly access product information, loyalty programs, etc. and tie those into the support process. Of course, the downside is that the human customer is now interacting with a kiosk, and whether there's a human or a computer on the other end of the Internet connection, it's not quite the same as speaking to somebody in-store.

While there are certainly valid arguments to be made on both sides, it seems like this technology, or something reasonably similar, will become a de-facto addition to the retail environment given the dramatic upswing of in-store self-service kiosks (for all sorts of uses), and the advent of more capable mobile devices. A few years from now, it seems like it would be more likely a customer would want to interact with a human being or really smart AI on the other end of their smartphone (a device already optimized for human interaction) rather than a self-contained kiosk. On the other hand, of course, kiosks will always be able to offer more functionality, larger screen real estate, peripherals like printers, and so on, so there's a place for them as well.

Technology aside, though, the success or failure of these services lies with their ability to connect with customers and offer them genuine value. My favorite quote from this Brain Trust survey comes from Camille P. Schuster, Ph.D., President, Global Collaborations, Inc., who suggests that, ". If the interaction doesn't really feel like talking with a "live" person it should not be presented that way. In many instances, consumers are seeking information and that source doesn't need to be in the form of a personal interaction." Both information and presentation of the information are important inside of a store, and even the most well thought-out product brochures and marketing info won't make a difference if they aren't presented in such a way that the customer will be receptive to them.

This could be the biggest challenge for companies like Experticity, whose entire business involves delivering a real-world experience inside of a real-world environment, but via an artificial, digital medium.

Tags: Experticity, self-service, in-store marketing, customer support

The Curious Shopper checks out Uniqlo

Though I first noticed articles about it back in November of last year, I still haven't found my way into the new Uniqlo store in NYC (granted I'm not exactly in the target demographic). But over at the Curious Shopper, Sara (who is), gives it a great going-over. She suggests that the retailer's difficulties moving out of its home market in Japan have been at least in part based on cultural differences:

Uniqlo has been challenged to translate its retail offering into other cultures. A first attempt at the UK market failed when big, splashy store openings were met with confusion. Now, Uniqlo is focused on bridging the culture gap, by understanding the mind of the fickle US consumer, while also maintaining a subtly Japanese aesthetic. They've set some lofty goals with that one.

When I visited the store, I had a slightly different observation. For me it was less of an American-Japanese gap they needed to bridge, and more of an Old Japan-New Japan gap that needed balancing. I saw spare Japanese discipline coupled with hip Japanese pop culture. The interplay between modern and traditional was fascinating, if not entirely cohesive. Most interestingly, the traditional was actually more in tune with the trends of American retail.

Sara also makes an excellent point about the use of repeating items/images as part of a merchandising strategy. Repetition is one of those basic Psych 101 principles that ties in to everything from short-term memory to pattern recognition, but we still see limited use of it in-store. While I could see a problem at a supermarket or big-box retailer, where trying to create repeating instances of 50,000 different brands might become a bit maddening, it seems like a natural fit for private label retail.

Tags: Uniqlo, repetition, merchandising, in-store marketing