Since the great majority of CPG purchasing occurs in-store, how important is digital in the path to purchase?

The title of this post is the question that Joel Rubenson asked Catherine Roe, head of CPG for Google. What stumped me was the sheer volume of "interest / passions" related searches, which just goes to indicate the opportunities for the CPG marketers.

Catherine reports that searches on Google.com related to recipes are up 38% in 2011 over 2010. And it’s a huge number. It’s 7.8 billion recipe-related searches on Google.com.

Just to give you a perspective, there are more searches around food and recipes than there is travel, beauty, and luxury. It is absolutely huge. The iPad or her computer or her phone has replaced her cookbook. So, she’s doing that research ahead of time on Google and then going to either a recipe site or a food site or whatever it might be to get the tips, to get the health information, to get the ingredients to get everything she needs. 

Read the interview in parts here

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The evolution of the "path of purchase".

Conventional wisdom has always been that most brand purchase decisions are made in the store. 

But with the new, digitally empowered consumer entering the store better prepared than ever before, is the new reality that most purchase decisions are made at home or on the way to the store?

This wonderful white paper by The Hub seems to suggest that the truth most likely lies somewhere in between.

The white paper goes on to list how can manufacturers ensure that their brands are included in the consideration set and make the final cut. They must identify shopper needs and behaviors at every phase along the path-to-purchase and deliver relevant experiences that shape purchase decisions, from pre-purchase to point-of-purchase, from consumption experience to post-experience reflection.

The consumer’s media consumption methods have changed and therefore the relevance of methods in which a brand can be relevant to them. The 24x7 access to socially connected devices is the single largest factor to change dynamics of marketing. The white paper reemphasizes what we are trying to create with AaramShop – an integration of the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) with the First Moment of Truth (FMOT) of the brand. Read more about it here.

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Real Paths of Purchase.

The importance of the shoppers' path of purchase is not lost on any brand marketer. If you can get your brand / product in the natural path of purchase of the shopper, more than half the battle is won.

The problem - while everyone understand the importance of the PtoP, establishing an exact path is a very tough exercise. It is made tougher as it would change as per variations in shopper demographic.   

This has often led folks to adopt a more "anecdotal" approach to establishing a path of purchase rather than looking at & relying on empirical data.

AaramShop has been able to accurately map the buying behavior of shoppers and their paths of purchase using the hybrid commerce platform. While what is presented here is an overall P2P of specific category-wide behavior, it is possible to establish this specific to shopper demographics, like age, gender, etc and also to brand specific behavior. 

As illustrated - if you are a brand in the "breakfast cereal category" you are more likely to be bought by buyers of "biscuits & cookies" than by the buyers of "rice, atta, lentils & dals". Make you wonder about brand placement, promos, and lot more.

This intelligence can assist brand marketers to better position / place their products in association to categories, thereby leveraging the consumers natural path of purchase.

You can view the various paths of purchase specific to category in the State of Online Grocery Shopping Report - which you can download from here. 

It is important to clarify that these depict "in-store" path of purchase and not the entire consumers shopping journey. 

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