From the web to the consumers' doorstep; enabled commerce for FMCG brands.

FMCG brands are uniquely challenged when it comes to exploiting the digital boom. The in-ability to close the loop using a traditional e-commerce route has plagued the sector forever. 

Almost all digital spends undertaken by FMCG brands have resulted in an increased awareness and engagement, however, resultant transactions have been a challenge. 

Traditional ecommerce has been a non-starter in the sector due to low product cost, lower retailer margins, very high logistics costs etc. 

AaramShop’s unique model, enables FMCG brands to extend their digital campaigns to have a last mile connect. 

Connecting digital assets to last mile assets for FMCG brands

AaramShop enables home delivery of your brands to millions of households across India via its thousands of partner retailers who are strategically placed within the neighborhoods. 

View a simple example here of how a “buy now” integration can change a touch-point to an action point. 

To ensure that your next digital campaign or your existing digital assets get you a higher and a trackable RoI, do contact me.

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"Clicks to Bricks" integration for FMCG brands' digital campaigns.

The growing importance of digital marketing is not lost on anyone. However, most brand marketers in the FMCG / CPG space find it difficult to justify the high engagement cost per consumer, especially because most current digital assets are restricted to creating awareness. 

There is now an option to change that. AaramShop has digitized the FMCG brands' existing last mile, thus enabling an integration of a “purchase now” prompt option within all digital assets. 

The consumers can now browse through all manner of digital communication, have the additional option to click on a “purchase now” tab, enabling them to order a brand from their preferred neighborhood retailer, who packs up and deliver in a matter of hours. 

Here is a neat example of seamless "Click to Brick" integration by Saffola (Marico Industries) giving its consumers a “purchase now” option on its website and at the same time it helps build a stronger bond with its channel by helping generate direct demand and action specific to the retailer outlets.

All digital assets of the brand like its websites, social media presence on platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc, review sites, blogs etc and and digital marketing campaigns can be now made to perform harder for the marketing dollar spend, and go beyond the just feel good awareness.

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• The Truth About What Works in Digital Marketing.

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• Digital Influencers of Brand Selection.

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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.

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• Social Media & CPG / FMCG brands.
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SHOP FLOOR; THE NEW PRIME TIME. Trend No 6

6. BRAND DECISION ARE MADE IN THE LAST MILE;

As many as 70% of brand decisions are made in the “last mile”. 70% and growing.

This research finding was 1st published by POPAI, and has been substantiated over years by a number of other studies including our own research using some of our last mile tools into various product categories. What is interesting is that in a lot of cases the percentage is higher.

What this indicates however is alarming. This percentage effectively indicates spillage (even gross wastage) of media buying costs which are not being successful or effective in generating real sales.

I am sure we have all experienced the magic of the last mile, whenever we have stepped out to pick up something like a washing machine, or a TV or a refrigerator – we leave our homes with a fair understanding of the product category, the top five brands in the category and our intended brand purchase, however, magically most of us come back with a different product – 70% of us do it time and time again.

Reasons why shoppers switch brands are multiple however almost all of them are centered on effective usage of last-mile consumer touch-points by some brand when compared to others.

Last-mile touch points are multiple & diverse ranging from product pricing, POSM quality, share of display, quality of experience, quality of salesmanship to basic issues like brand presence. All these combined create a last-mile experience which ensures brand switches.

On a number of brands our studies show us a significant “intent of purchase” of the brand amongst consumers when they walk in to the store – thereby indicating obvious good work done on the awareness & interest creation front by the advertising, however, significant negative shift in the actual purchase.

The fact that an in-effective last mile can be a bleed on the success is well understood, however, not all brand managers seem to understand how to address the issue in effective and measureable ways.

Shop Floor; The New Prime Time.

Prime Time ; A boon for brand marketing folks worldwide… it was a time when consumers would sit-back, glued to their TV sets taking in one soap or the other, or a game, or news or a movie and along with it absorbing a healthy dose of creative commercial messages which wet their appetite for the brands.


Logic had it that more the amount of noise created, the more liberal the usage of sexy celebrities, the more dazzling the production quality of the TVC - the higher the resultant brand recall. It therefore, surmised (almost) that the consumer would walk-up to the store, seek out and purchase the brand which had the highest recall in his mind.


As a result this thought process; the brand marketing folks have chased that prime time spot to stay “relevant” in the consumers consideration set. This chase is now a habit – almost a compulsion and an obsession – consider the fact that most of the industry dialogues seem to be completely focussed around the world of that 30 sec TVC.


Getting the consumer to be “aware” of the brand is something which everyone has focussed on for a while, albeit the dependence of mass-media for the same has been the chosen route. Thus it has been the one-way, single message for all, top-down communication which has dominated the thinking process.


However, for a consumer to progress in his mind and actions through his “path to purchase”, he has to undertake a process of 1st changing from a consumer to a shopper into the category and then from a shopper to a buyer of the brand and while awareness creation in the mind of the consumer is a critical 1st step, it is perhaps only the starting point.


The much discussed “path-to-purchase” model (figure 1.1) does a great job of explaining the consumers’ progressive levels of engagement with the brand and defines the path to purchase that a consumer moves through. It also explains the typical media vehicles or other experiential tools which can be used to influence behaviour. The funnel also represents the attrition / reduction of number / volume of consumers’ at every stage of the “path to purchase”.





Interestingly, while this model does not necessarily attempt to comment on the way brands needs to prioritize their overall marketing spends, brands have, over the years mirrored their marketing spends as per the funnel, with the maximum spends going into creating awareness (at the top of the funnel) and minimal amounts in the last mile (at the bottom of the funnel) to ensure conversion and sales.


There was a time, many years ago, when this logic made sense in terms of ensuring a wider reach, effectively informing customers, creating desire, etc. In those days the business logic of marketing would be simple; create a product, create an exciting story around it (read ad), make people aware of the product/brand and ensure it is made available in the shops – consumer will queue up and buy. The more noise you make – the more people will buy!


Today that hypothesis does not hold true. There is a massive shift in the way a brand should allocate its funds across the path of purchase. A brand now has to not merely tweak its allocation of funds towards the path of purchase; it has to completely re-invent its allocation logic.


Time is ripe to reverse the allocation. A brand should and needs to spend the largest share of its budgets in the last mile (lower stages of the funnel) as against on creating “awareness and recall” of the brand.


Let me share some of the current and evolving consumer behavioural trends I have observed, from around the world, which make the need of this change real and urgent, please visit the blog and view the 10 specific trends as I see them;

The last mile just got longer! Contd..2

2. A consumer’s source of information, research, evaluation and influence are not led by an organisation or brand.

The consumer seeks information from a myriad of sources that he defines and trusts. These opinion forming communities can destroy the prospect’s chance of ever buying the product or build up a frenzy and passion. The need to own “the” iPhone, for example, made passionate consumers queue for hours, although everyone of them already had a mobile phone.

There are communication and interaction opportunities that allow brands to deploy a broader set of messages, tailored to reach their audiences where they live and play. It is critical to address all these touchpoints because while the consumer undertakes his brand research through one touchpoint, he seeks affirmation of his choice through a different touchpoint and will probably make a purchase at a very different touchpoint.

3. The central idea of the campaign has become more important than the media used. The campaign idea needs to create the ripples which should take a life of their own.

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The last mile just got longer! Contd..5

5. The customer’s experience with the brand throughout its lifetime will drive the future. Marketers increasingly need to look at extending their roles throughout the lifecycle of the product to ensure future purchases.

Cute brand messaging will need to be extended to laborious number crunching and analysis. Customer relationship management will be important not only in the high value B2B businesses scenario but also in the low product value (read low brand switching costs) B2C scenario. Re-purchase has become the new and critical benchmark to monitor brand marketing success.

The role of the marketer is growing and is going to be far more revenue-led than in the past. No longer is it considered enough to create fantastic brand experiences pre-purchase, or even to ensure conversion at the purchase point. In fact, that is just the beginning. The last mile just got a lot longer.

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Tools to measure ROI of the marketing dollar.

PULSE SUITE is one of it’s kind collection of marketing services tools which should be used by marketers to improve productivity, enhance brand coverage, better understand the brand presence in the last mile and have a comprehensive control on the marketing dollars being spend by any brand.

These are tools which allow a better “feel of the pulse” of their respective area of focus, and are a combination of brand diagnostic tools and process improvement tools.

Last mile - which is also the place when any customer make the key brand specific decision, is indeed very complex for all brands across categories. We have ensured that all our tools are able to report this complexity by way of easy to understand and interpret intelligence. Additionally these tools are “live”, thus ensuring that the clients have access to simple to understand dashboards which transmit real time intelligence from the “street up”.

Market Pulse, Shopper Pulse and Event Pulse are the first in a series of Pulse tools which will be available to the discerning marketer across Asia. For more information and demos on the tools, please log in to www.pulsesuite.com