Sunday, January 29, 2012

70% impulse purchase - no more.

70% of the brand decisions are made in the last mile - we have been following this "theory" for years and I have written plenty about it on this blog. Retailers and brands have taken it for granted that attractive presentation and packaging profoundly influence most shoppers’ purchasing decisions. 

While Paco Underhill in his bestseller Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, described supermarkets “as places of high impulse buying…. 60% to 70% of purchases there were unplanned, grocery industry studies have shown us.” These prompted retailers to devote ever growing resources to in-store promotion.

However, new(er) research by Wharton marketing professor David R. Bell differs with Underhill, describing the idea that most supermarket purchases are unplanned as something of an urban legend. In a new research paper, “Unplanned Category Purchase Incidence: Who Does It, How Often and Why,” Bell argues that the amount of unplanned buying is closer to 20%.

The above research is extremely significant and while I still believe that the "last mile is the new prime time" (when compared to the traditional TV prime time), there are a number of reasons for Prof. Bell's findings to be relevant today. One of the primary reasons is the emergence of the internet as the Zero Moment of Truth for brands and its impact on the First Moment of Truth in the store.

The shopper today walks into a store with far more per-purchase knowledge, recommendations & peer suggestions than was possible in the times when "Why we buy" was penned about 12 years ago. It is time to dump the 70% theory and focus on multichannel strategies and web-influenced retail sales.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Mobile content development strategy for tablets.

Forrester Research predicts that tablet sales this year will start to outpace notebooks. While it is clear that marketers cannot ignore the tablet as a channel, the mobile device landscape has become increasingly complex and confusing for brands and consumers alike. 

How do you incorporate the tablet as part of your mobile content development strategy? 

Doug Heise and Sascha Langfus list some of the best practices for building an optimized, engaging Web presence on the tablet here.
AaramShop has adopted the Web App approach which helps it deliver the best of both worlds, allowing highly interactive mobile apps for the tablet that is optimized from a usability and functionality perspective, but that can also be deployed to a wide range of platforms and devices. However, what really caught my attention was the need to distinguish between the mobile phone app and the tablet app. Clearly a lot of additional work to be done here.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Six Social Media Trends for 2012

From the guy who gets his trends right - most of the times, here are 6 Social Media Trends for the year ahead:
  1. Convergence Emergence. 
  2. The Cult of Influence.  
  3. Gamification Nation. 
  4. Social Sharing.  
  5. Social Television. 
  6. The Micro Economy.
To understand the trends in detail read this post by David Armano on HBR