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Shopper Research By Kath Rhodes
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It’s not that easy getting shopper research right...
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1. People often make choices intuitively, instinctively, repetitively... They find it
hard to explain their behaviour
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2. When they do chat about their behaviour they’re unreliable
witnesses...
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3. And it’s hard for researchers to always be there in the moment when
people are actually shopping...
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4. Plus consumption usually happens outside the store, but still affects
shopping choices...
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Here’s the Qual Street take on how to get around the challenges shopper
research presents...
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1. Use ‘Live Action’ methods... that capture shopper behaviour as it
happens. The classic...
Observations & Intercepts
Watching shopping and asking questions that help
understand choices
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9 Observations & Intercepts: Two Golden rules for observing...
1. Use mindfulness techniques – see Maria Konnikova’s ‘How to think like Shelock Holmes’
2. Develop Hypothesis about the behaviour you are seeing
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10 Observations & Intercepts: Three Golden rules for intercepting...
1. Be in-store at the right time – think when, how, if people shop in this category
2. Be in the right place – think demographics & store format
3. Ask the right questions – uncover behaviour, test hypothesis...
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11 Here are some good intercept questions...
What choices were you
weighing up?
What was easiest for you
to spot?
If you hadn’t chosen that what would you have
gone for?
What one thing tipped you into choosing that?
What did you think about
when you were selecting that?
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Another live action method...
Real time shop-alongs
Tagging along with shoppers in-store
(recruiting them there and then) and then
following up on key behaviours you are
interested in after the shop... Or setting up
screen share shop-alongs for on-line
shopping
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Or a Live Action Quant method to consider...
Shopper Retail Insight (SRI)
This business has involved its expertise in football stats
into a technology that reveals shopper behaviour...
(www.shopperretailinsight.com)
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2. ‘Experiments’ can lead to shopper insight too...
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The simplest ‘experiment’ - use the store
Ask respondents to make a choice and then explore it...
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Or more sophisticated ‘experiments’...
Set up alternative choices in a ‘mock’ shop and experiment with
these
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Or future focused NPD ‘experiments’
Reproduce Jpegs of competitor set packs and develop your own
future pack/ NPD ideas. Pin the jpegs to your pinboard in
category groups and see which ones respondents go for
Play choice games in qual groups – try ‘The Board
Meeting’ game
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3. Gathering ‘evidence’ helps us uncover real behaviour
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‘Evidence’ can be gathered in ‘low tech’ and ‘easy tech’ ways over time...
Collecting receipts, photos of products...uploading onto on-
line qual sites
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And there are great apps for collecting on-going ‘evidence’ too...
Photograph, voice record, video, text and type uploads that
record behaviour – needs project managing...
https://www.ethosapp.com/
Ethos app for example
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4. Finally, there’s a place for Q&A sessions in shopper research too...
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Exploring what other people did/ hypothesis testing
For example, showing photos of other shoppers’ behaviour somehow helps consumers
tune in to their own
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Understanding how some brands have ‘locked in’ habitual behaviour
Eliciting how and why people are connected to brands
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Recalling shopping experiences that have formed behaviours
Eliciting the sticky ideas that have stuck in the consumer’s
mind
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And in general, it’s important to make sure the ‘store’ is always part of the consumer research project
Blow-up photos of the fixture in groups and refer
back to the fixture throughout the session...
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Here’s how to spot a good qual shopper researcher. Ask yourself these
questions...
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Are they doing enough ‘live evidence’: right time, right place, right questions?
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Are they up for intercepting, doing live interviews, being anywhere &
everywhere? On a Friday night... In Wigan...
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Are senior people with strong interpretative skills doing the
fieldwork? If it matters when it happens, you have to have people there
that matter when it happens...
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Have they done a recce of the stores they’re using before the research
starts?
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Do they know in-store protocols and how to work with store colleagues?
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The Client’s role in making the project work...
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Frame research objectives to focus on the behaviour you want to change
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Get the necessary in-store permissions
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Over the long term develop a mock shop with full pricing and
merchandising
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Deliver all shopper behaviour data you have to support a project
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Debrief differently - at the fixture, with shoppers, using film & photo
footage
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That’s it! Good luck with your shopper research project...