Friday, October 21, 2011
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
SHOP FLOOR; THE NEW PRIME TIME. Trend No. 5
5. “ROBO” IS FOR REAL;
It is well understood that the consumer is spending a lot of time online, in a lot of cases much more time than what he spends in front of the TV set or reading print. And this share of time is increasing at a feverish pace.
When online the consumer does his research on the brand, this research can be a combination of self driven or could be triggered by peers on his social networks.
The more expensive the purchase, the more involved and extensive the research.
This is far more relevant because this is where the consumer spends time engaged in the category, seeking and deciding what alternatives he has options of. This is when is willing to form opinions and is willing to read and listen to referrals.
Most importantly, this is one dialogue process where the consumer is completely in control – he not only chooses the time and level of dialogue, if he does not like what he sees he can merely click it away and move else where.
The consumer is not closed to any brand in this stage – he is in fact in a “SELL TO ME” mindset, which has been well captured by Yahoo and exploited to the fullest by Google by their huge success of Adwords platform. This process is radically different from the one way communication which he gets subjected to in a TVC, print ad or a hoarding.
Putting up the brands’ TVC on Youtube.com is not the answer, ensuring that the brand participates in the “search” journey – by providing access to relevant data & information on brand comparison of features, USPs, costs, etc, and enabling communication with the user community and engaging with the user community - is the answer.
While brand owners have started spending an increased percentage of their budgets online (and is growing) – for a number of brands that spend still is backed by the “awareness creation” thought process, rather than focusing on the consumers search for information journey.
This integration of shopping with technology is real. 87% of US consumers research products online before buying them in person or in a store.
However across categories…the major buying still happens off line.
ROBO = Research Online Buy Offline.
This is not limited to B2B products or big ticket purchases like computers, phones or cars, but extends across all categories.
The consumer spends his research time comparing features, absorbing user experience reviews, understanding costs.
All this before he heads out in the last mile, to check out the physical experience and then buy.
To get into the consumers mindset, presence in the last mile needs to be preceded with relevant presence in the online search process.
SHOP FLOOR; THE NEW PRIME TIME. Trend No 4
This “shopper type” has meant that we could decide which type would want discounts vs. which type would buy lifestyle vs. which type would want convenience.
This “typification” meant that we could target relevant brand messages to these specific segments of customers and the expectation has been that once a value shopper always a value shopper.
However, new research indicates that the same shopper shops in discount stores, while he also shops in departmental stores and specialty stores… but he/she shops differently.
Consumers are less loyal to any single channel / type of retailer than they were in the past.
Different needs = Different stores.
What this really means is that a brand needs to increasingly target the shopper close to the moment of purchase and hence at the store level and dependent on the store format.
Consider a shopper at a “cash and carry” store – he or she is there to buy in bulk and is seeking out value for money. So if a cola brand has to be relevant to the shopper, it has to offer a bulk deal or maybe a value pack based offer of 2 free bottles with 10 bottles or it might want to push its mega sized bottles at a discount.
Now consider the same shopper hops into the gas station convenience store for a drink while he tops up his fuel tank. For the same brand of cola to be in the consideration set in this format – it has to be in a very handy size, in an easy to grab location, ready for immediate consumption and maybe bundled with a short-eat.
The fact that the same shopper will respond to very different stimulus at the two locations is because his purpose of shopping is different – value vs convenience.
While the brand would have the uniform overall image, however, its last mile messaging, is what gets the brand into the shopper’s basket.
The brands consumer touch-points need to be relevant to where is it placed and which need state does that format address.
One singular overall “awareness” focussed message / campaign does not work on ensuring conversion in the last mile.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Shop Floor; The New Prime Time.
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;