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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...

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Doing Research Right

kath@qual-street.co.uk Tel: 01904 819140 Mob: 07738 180529