Given that 60-70% of purchasing decisions are made instore, by making it easier to buy, supermarkets are perhaps meeting a fundamental need for reminding, in shoppers...
Taking the three key points as reported in the Which? report, it may be useful for suppliers and retailers to consider some 'helping buy' options...
1. 'You read shelves from left to right and top to bottom so supermarkets put more profitable products, such as own-brand products, to the right or under the leading brand' Product-siting can be helpful, especially to the time-poor shopper and placing similar products side-by-side makes for easier comparison. Where retailers miss a trick is in not facilitating true like-with-like comparison, ideally via unit pricing. Retailers that mislead or confuse at this point are eventually 'punished' via loss of custom...
2. 'You may find that products that are associated together can be located next to each other to encourage you to buy all of them' Sharp-eyed NAMs may recognise this as category management, the purpose of which is to help the shopper to make complementary purchases. Retailers might make this more explicit to researchers and naïve shoppers via appropriate signage and possibly linked promotion, providing the product-set is truly complementary, and not simply an inducement to over-buy, as in a bogof..
3. 'Your peripheral vision notices movement - 'wobbly signs' - but not necessarily fixed signs'. In an increasingly cost-conscious and clutter-free store environment, wobblies would not have survived for thirty years if they were not effective.... Given the increasing difficulty in attracting and retaining shopper attention in a multimedia-saturated world, perhaps suppliers and retailers should reassess their optimisation of the one 'grabber' that seems to work - the humble 'wobblie'...
Above all, when the consumer-shopper takes the trouble to pay attention, it represents a major break-through...
We call it "paying attention" for a reason. It's worth quite a bit, and ought to be cherished...
Seth Godin
Taking the three key points as reported in the Which? report, it may be useful for suppliers and retailers to consider some 'helping buy' options...
1. 'You read shelves from left to right and top to bottom so supermarkets put more profitable products, such as own-brand products, to the right or under the leading brand' Product-siting can be helpful, especially to the time-poor shopper and placing similar products side-by-side makes for easier comparison. Where retailers miss a trick is in not facilitating true like-with-like comparison, ideally via unit pricing. Retailers that mislead or confuse at this point are eventually 'punished' via loss of custom...
2. 'You may find that products that are associated together can be located next to each other to encourage you to buy all of them' Sharp-eyed NAMs may recognise this as category management, the purpose of which is to help the shopper to make complementary purchases. Retailers might make this more explicit to researchers and naïve shoppers via appropriate signage and possibly linked promotion, providing the product-set is truly complementary, and not simply an inducement to over-buy, as in a bogof..
3. 'Your peripheral vision notices movement - 'wobbly signs' - but not necessarily fixed signs'. In an increasingly cost-conscious and clutter-free store environment, wobblies would not have survived for thirty years if they were not effective.... Given the increasing difficulty in attracting and retaining shopper attention in a multimedia-saturated world, perhaps suppliers and retailers should reassess their optimisation of the one 'grabber' that seems to work - the humble 'wobblie'...
Above all, when the consumer-shopper takes the trouble to pay attention, it represents a major break-through...
We call it "paying attention" for a reason. It's worth quite a bit, and ought to be cherished...
Seth Godin
3 comments:
Brian,
You make some very good points. Getting the basics right in-store is very important. For example every customer should be able to easily see the price of every product and understand every promotion. If shoppers can't do this about 30% of people either buy an alternative or go and buy it a different store. To make things worse they also loose trust in that store.
All signage not just needs to be clear but to also add value to help shopper make a buying decision and use the product. This is mainly achieve by smart flexible printed signage. The issue for some retailers is that they do not have and the integrated signage management software to pull all of this information together and keep it in sync.
Stores have to not just the basics right but also incorporate some of the techniques that Amazon use to get shoppers to buy now. I have written extensively on this topic and would be happy to send a copy of my white paper to any KAMBlog readers who might find it useful.
Many thanks for your comment, Malcolm. Please let me have a copy also
Brian
I would be keen to read your white paper Malcolm.
Thank you
Niall
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