Understanding Shopper Behaviour with SBXL

If you are going to grab a soft drink or a box of tissues, chances are that you won’t bother comparison shopping. You are thirsty now or know you will be soon and you want your favourite soft drink. You just buy it. Quite simply, consumers buy out of necessity (you need shampoo) or habit or because these items are part of their everyday way of being. These low cost fast moving consumer goods have low profit margins but a huge volume of sales.

How can a retailer effectively market these fast moving items? Is it worth it because the profit margin is so low? I’m Phillip Adcock and I’d like to answer some of your questions. For now, let’s think about trends. What are the current and upcoming fast moving consumer goods?

In 2014, trends in FMCG included things organic, interactive marketing, and social media. Go natural, get your name on a bottle of Coke, share a hashtag on Facebook. That was then. What about now? According to Grocer Jobs, the 2017 trends in FMCG for the UK include healthy food, lager, licensed goods, African products, and flexitarian products.

Inside FMCG reported in January 2017 that the major food trends in the Australian grocery industry leaned toward health concerns. Wellness tonics, purple foods (the colour indicating high nutrient levels and antioxidants), coconut, Flexitarian, and Mindful meal prep were the products moving off the shelves quickly.

Here’s something I discovered, when it comes to the sale of these low profit items, 71% of shoppers who bought them on special offer would have made the purchase anyway.

Using the information gleaned from reports on the trends in fast moving consumer goods, a pattern can be seen. With the experience my team and I have in understanding the retail sector, the power of brands, the needs of the customer, and the value of testing the behaviour of shoppers, we are well situated to help in the development of an effective plan to place and promote huge amounts of fast moving items.

We know most customers will make the purchase because they need the item, with little motivation from special promotions. Sometimes it is as simple as having the item placed so that the shopper cannot avoid seeing it. Prominently placed purple food (in Australia at least) may hit the customer’s impulse button.

Some of my clients like to read more about product placement. However, while the search for data on the latest trends is intriguing, unless you understand the relationship between the shopper and these fast moving consumer goods, trend analysis won’t help your business.

This is where I can help. It is important to have expertise behind you here because more than half of consumer spending is for FMCG. I’ve spent more than 20 years studying the dynamics between retailers and paying customers. If you are interested in discussing how my market research services can help you, contact me via email pa@sbxl.com or call 01543 255 259.

In 2017, it makes sense to think that the right social media campaign will increase sales. There has never been a time like now to reach into the homes and hearts of consumers.

The catch is that companies need the right information so that they can tell consumers about their products and brands in an enticing manner. This typically involves the four Ps of marketing. These are product, price, place, and promotion. How do we know which choices we should make as retailers? Research. That’s the answer. Retailers need to understand shopping behaviour.

One traditional way of gaining insight into the customer experience is through a focus group or a questionnaire. Retail market research services asked customers what they liked, what triggered them to reach the point of purchase, take the big step and buy.

It seems like a reasonable way to approach the issue. To carry out effective brand advertising, you need to know what it is that appeals to the consumer. This is at the heart of marketing. With the right information and insights, retailers can implement the innovation and strategy that will drive their brands to the top. Where do you get this information? From the consumer. Right?

Yes. And no.

The concept makes sense, but to take a consumer’s word for what triggered or prompted the purchase is about as effective as throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks. Maybe it will stick, maybe some of it will stick, maybe none of it will stick. I’m sure you’re aware it can be expensive and time-consuming to set up a marketing program that misses the mark.

Even a successful business analysis, incorporating all the most recent insight into the impact of the global marketplace, online shopping, and social media can still miss the mark. What they miss is a true, deeper understanding of the process of basic human emotion found in what I call the ‘Lizard Brain’. If you recognise the power behind emotion, you will know how to market your company, your channel, your brand.

Marketers must understand the atavistic nature of shoppers. In spite of all the modern sophistication, we are still driven by the instinct for self-preservation. At our core is the need to survive. When we go shopping, our ancestral need for self-preservation waits in our lizard brain. Our cave dwelling ancestors liked high-calorie food because food was not always easy to come by. High calorie food helped us survive the lean days. In the grocery store, it’s human nature to look for high-fat, calorie-dense foods.

In a focus group, people can’t tell you these things. You miss powerful insight because this knowledge is found at the subconscious level. This is why retail market research can be such a challenge.

To learn more about effective retail marketing research, contact me on: 01543 255 259 or email pa@sbxl.com