The role of mobile in shopping related research.

At the Path To Purchase Institute’s annual Shopper Marketing Expo, Alison Chaltas of GFK shopper and retail strategy, shared a global study that revealed the future of shopping is “getting extreme.”

Chaltas said that a hard economy – with one in three barely able to meet expenses and only 15% living comfortably – is fueling the emergence of a new shopper profile. This “extreme shopper” is wired; 68% research purchases on the internet and buy in store.

While “extreme shopper” was new, the concept of ROBO (research online buy offline) has been around for a while, but the percentage was interestingly high. However, what caught my attention was the way in which the shopper was doing the research and the emergence of mobile as the research tool.

The study found one quarter are using their phone to help shop, and that they’re seeing a broadening of categories this applies to, not just consumer electronics and clothes, but also food and beverages, as well as health and beauty.

They also found a multi-dimensional aspect to mobile shopping: value seeking is the goal of 89%, 51% are using mobile to connect to social media as a shopping tool, 24% are using it transactionally, and 82% informationally.

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The Flight From Conversation.

Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at M.I.T wrote this wonderful article in the NYT where she says that we’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. 

At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates. My students tell me about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done.

Read more of her insightful article here.

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Mobile and Social Steering Future for CPG.

"We see a merging between social and mobile as two really popular platforms coming together, not only for ecommerce, but also to drive multichannel behavior. It’s just incredibly dynamic, and we’ve really adopted an integrative planning framework that takes into account the consumer journey and how the consumer is using digital channels and platforms. That’s become the driver for how we plan our entire marketing strategy and budget."

It was good to read this interview of Jeff Jarrett, vice president for global digital marketing, as he spoke about the most effective ad formats for consumer packaged goods, and how online CPG sales have required the industry to establish a larger footprint in digital. Read the full interview here where-in he talks on strategies, RoI, impact of mobile & social media and the changing consumer behavior. 

A must read for all FMCG / CPG marketers on how the trends are shaping up.

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