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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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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Analysis of online grocery shopping in India.

As a FMCG / CPG brand marketer, you will love this comprehensive report on the Indian consumers’ online purchase behavior across FMCG categories and its related impact on brand preferences. 

In the SOGS Report: India, findings have been presented in terms of four broad parameters:

1. Who is buying groceries online? – SOGS report dives into demographic details of the shoppers including gender & age and it's impact on purchase. 

2. Where are the buyers coming from? - the current report restricted to the National Capital Region.

3. When they are shoppers buying the groceries? - time frames and order patterns.

4. What categories and brands are they buying? – Comprehensively explores categories and sub-categories and the top selling brands within them.

Data used on the SOGS report is based on actual purchase data on AaramShop covering 542 shopping bags between 1st of July 2011 to 15th of August 2011.

You can download the free SOGS report from here. 
The report is 6.25MB and in a PDF format.

Unlearn e-commerce to win.

Jon Stine at the CISCO Retail Blog, in his recent post - seems to have hit the nail on the head. He writes:

"When e-commerce entered retail life in the mid-1990s, it was understandably regarded as just another channel of distribution – indeed, as just one more store. With this perspective, the key performance metric was (and generally remains to this day) site revenue. Conversion, another key metric, was defined as site transactions as a percent of site visits.


This still makes sense – but at a narrow, misleading level, because e-commerce no longer defines the connected world for retail.


In this age of Google and Facebook, the primary value today of the Internet to the shopper – and to your brand – is less about transactions, and more about search. On the PC, on the tablet, on the mobile devices, amidst the aisles.


The Internet – and the search function of the ever-mobile Internet – is now the front door of the entire brand."

Read more of this post here;

What Jon points to is what we AaramShop are experimenting with - the hybrid retail model of integrating the "zero moment of truth" of the shopper with respect to any brand (ZMOT / online research, social media engagement), with the "first moment of truth" when the product is actually bought. (FMOT)

The brands should appreciate the fact that the FMOT for the brand need not happen in the traditional e-commerce manner for them to have a overall e-commerce strategy for their CPG / FMCG brand. The huge volume to pre-purchase online research is being overlooked due to the limitations of the old e-commerce thinking.

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