The Pleasant Shopper
A casually dressed but stylish woman enters the store with her pre-teen daughter and stops to say hello to the associate who’s stationed near the entrance. She’s extremely friendly, and has a large shopping bag of items from a neighboring store. She tries on many things during her hour-long visit. This woman is quite a shopper! She leaves her daughter in the store to run out to the car because she had forgotten her checkbook. During her visit, she approaches a salesperson at the cash wrap several times with questions about various items, and asks about returns. When we looked at the videotape, it was clear she had stolen five itemsduring this visit, totaling about $350. From the moment we saw her cross the lease line, she sold herself repeatedly and extremely convincingly to the store associates. Unlike most customers who are greeted at the entrance but keep walking to some real or imagined destination point within the store, she actually stopped to return the salutation and exchange pleasantries. She carried her shopping bag proudly – almost flaunting it to make sure it was in full view of everyone, as if to say you have nothing to worry about with me or my bag or my previous purchases or even my credentials as a spender. She sold herself by speaking with three different associates -– for her, there was no hiding or skulking around in the aisles like somecommon shoplifter. With more than a dozen cameras positioned throughout the shopping environment, we caught her every move. We watched as she waited to see where the associates were positioned, biding her time to make sure two of them were occupied with other customers. We watched her use the empty boxes in her shopping bag to conceal each item she stole. We watched her leave the store with ...
Mmm, mmm, Soup Shopping
Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran “The Emotional Quotient of Soup Shopping,” an interesting behind-the-scenes piece on Campbell’s redesigned soup labels. Campbell, in an effort to connect with customers (and boost sales), uses new neuromarketing techniques to measure physiological reactions to their marketing. A few years back, the company uncovered the idea that customers’ reported reactions to ads bore little relationship to actual soup sales. Campbell is hoping that biometric tools measuring factors like perspiration and heart rate, combined with deep interviews, will more accurately measure the effectiveness of the company’s package design and advertising. Based on this new research, Campbell will hold onto the iconic red and white label for its three biggest sellers, but other varieties will feature “larger, more vibrant pictures of soup.” We’re a little skeptical about the benefits of neuromarketing research alone, since it measures emotional intensity without content or context. However, Campbell’s is onto something here. By combining biometric data with carefully crafted deep in-store interviews and store observations, they have been able to zero in on how customers really perceive their cans. As Campbell and other companies are increasingly realizing, there is no substitute for in-store research and moment of truth observation, questioning, and analysis. After all, when asked why they eat more soup or not, people tend to “say they don't think of it,” according to Doug Conant, Campbell's chief executive. Other methods, like focus groups and surveys can also provide valuable information, but they often need to rely on the shoppers’ unreliable short-term memory or their projection of future behavior and intent. When companies rely too heavily on focus groups and survey data and neglect to closely observe how shoppers interact with their designs in the store, like Tropicana did with their short-lived redesign, they run the risk of damaging their brand and alienating ...
Want to do something fun? Sorry not today.
We’re a few snowy days from February 27, otherwise known as Open That Bottle Night. The night was invented by the two Wall Street Journal wine columnists -- in their words, “You know that bottle of wine you've been keeping around for that special occasion that never arrives or because the wine is always going to be better tomorrow? Open that bottle!” Curious, because you might think we wouldn’t need to be prodded into taking part in something as pleasurable as a bottle of wine. A recent New York Times article by John Tierney explored the surprisingly widespread human tendency to procrastinate pleasure. We wait to use gift cards, wait to redeem frequent flier miles, and endlessly put off visiting our own hometown tourist attractions. According to a study conducted by Suzanne B. Shu and Ayelet Gneezy, professors of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, San Diego, people who have moved to Chicago, Dallas and London visit fewer local landmarks during their first year than the typical tourist visits during a short stay. The only time Chicagoans run around visiting local attractions is just before they are about to move out of town. The same professors gave people gift certificates for movie tickets and French pastries. Some of the certificates expired in a few weeks, while others didn’t expire for two months. The people who got the longer term certificates were more confident they would redeem the gifts, but less likely to actually pull the trigger. It turns out we overestimate how much free time we’ll have in the future. And we become overly focused on imagining idealized scenarios, in which we paint pictures of achieving maximum value and pleasure from miles, gift cards, or bottles of red—without acting to turn these “magical thinking” thought processes ...
Saturday Morning at the Hardware Store
I walk in and a clerk approaches to ask if I need help. I tell him I need a flashlight, just something basic. He walks me to the appropriate spot in the aisle, and begins describing the selection. “We’ve got your Eveready. $3.95. Not the greatest, but does the job,” he says, starting at his lowest price point. “Then there’s this Energizer. Better grip. $6.99. Or we’ve got a Sylvania. Good for the garage. It’s $12.99.” He takes a step to the right, moving toward something else, as if he’s signaling that we’re about to enter a special new universe. “Of course,” he tells me with a knowing look, “you could get this.” He begins hefting a powerful looking cylinder of silvery black metal and then starts thwacking it slightly menacingly on the palm of his other hand. “This,” he pronounces, “this is the one the cops carry.” Of course, he had me at the product demo, but the law enforcement piece put me all in. I buy two of them……at $49.99—each. There are a number of lessons here, not the least of which is the incalculable sales value of story in the store. This was a pitch-perfect bravura performance, and in case you’re thinking today’s workforce isn’t trainable in this skill, you need to know that this associate was not some old-timer hardware store guy—but a 20-something “kid.”
Prescient Retail
What if there were a store that knew everything you wanted before you got there, and all of it was waiting for your arrival, ready to go? It sounds like some parallel universe you may not have yet experienced, but it may well be in a future just up the road. I first witnessed a stage 1 example of this kind of “no-shop shopping” atBed Bath and Beyond, which allows customers to select and purchase merchandise in any of its stores, but then has everything ready at any other Bed Bath store anywhere in the country. It’s a service near and dear to the hearts of parents of college students, allowing them to make all the in situ summer selections of sheets, wastebaskets, pots, pans, and bath mats for the far-away dorm room or college apartment—ready and waiting for the start of the fall semester. In this example, the shopper still needs to shop a store, but is able to do so in a more leisurely way, when product availability is high, tension low, and move-in deadlines don’t loom—and simply shift the pick-up to another time and place. A more recent entry is mygofer.com, a new venture from Sears Holdings Corporation, which allows customers to shop online for groceries, electronics, apparel and more, and then pick up the designated items at a My Gofer store the same day—presumably a defunct Sears or Kmartlocation, now re-purposed as the bridge between the online and bricks and mortar worlds. This service also offers a delivery option and guarantees product availability. Interestingly, these hybrids acknowledge an important positive of the traditional retail experience—in one case, the customer desire to see and touch the merchandise, and in the other, the need for immediate gratification. At the same time, they both endeavor to minimize what consumers don’t want—crowded aisles, vapid ...
Seduced and Abandoned
In days gone by (any time before the current recession), the shopping cart was a customer’s rolling possession holder, containing all the selections that were as good as bought and paid for. With its vertical bars, the cart gave off a warning to other shoppers to keep out, contents contained within this high-security traveling metal fencing are “my stuff.” At the same time, each product placed within the cart represented the shopper’s (almost) solemn commitment to purchase—nothing would leave the cart until checkout. Sure, once in a great while you might see a vaguely embarrassed customer beg off an item at checkout—to the tsk-tsks, tut-tuts and clucking sounds of others in the queue, a chorus of muses who sensed some important cosmic code of shopping conduct had been violated. But mostly, the mighty mobile fortress simply served as the shopper’s purchase conveyance until their items could be taken out to the parking lot and put in the car. No more. In a recent study we did for a large retail chain, upwards of 500 items were abandoned every day in each of the stores we were in, relegated to a corral of carts in the corner whose sole purpose was to house these rejected products (looking rather forlorn, anthropomorphically speaking, like abandoned puppies at a shelter). A cottage industry sprang up in the stores to sort and re-stock these “re-shops”—a thankless, never-ending task for the associates. Clearly, customers had exploded the idea that moving an item from the shelf into their cart represented any kind of implied purchase agreement. Yesterday’s New York Times featured an article on abandonments in the online shopping world, highlighting a new web service which remarkets to those who might put an item in their electronic “cart,” but not finish the transaction. It’s an interesting approach to nudging ...
Will McDonald’s drink Starbuck’s latte?
Is it any surprise McDonald’s has brewed itself boldly into the coffee business? The McDonald’s menu has evolved dramatically since itsfounding days in the 1950s, back when it was a simple spot to get a burger, fries and a drink. The company has adapted to shifting consumer tastes, wants, and demands, and has become a major player at breakfast, in chicken, in snacks, salads, and more. There have been a few flops along the way, but in the last six years, McDonald’s menu innovations, better service, and improved atmospherics, have pulled in new customers and boosted profits. Now, thanks largely to Starbucks, Americans now crave fancy coffee drinks, and want them for breakfast, in the afternoon, and even after dinner. It’s no surprise McDonald’s is seeking to capture all these newly evolved coffee cravers. McDonald’s mochas, lattes, and cappuccinos have gotten positive buzz; even people who prefer Starbucks have given the McDonald’s drinkspretty high marks. And coffee drinkers who get their caffeine fix at McD’s can pocket the savings over the same drink at Starbucks. In recessionary times, that’s a powerful advantage. One survey found that 60% of consumers will trade to McDonald’s if the coffee drinks are cheaper and made faster. There’s also the convenience factor – you can grab a latte while picking up a happy meal for your kids, in a part of town Starbucks hasn’t yet hit, or on a road trip. Starbucks is fighting back against the McCafe invasion with an ad campaign focusing on quality adherence; they’re also experimenting with a breakfast value menu and one dollar coffee. However, we’re betting plenty of consumers will choose McDonald’s premium coffee along with its iconic food offerings over coffee at Starbucks accompanied by its made-off-premise bakery items and microwaved sandwiches. On the day ...
The camera never lies…
...but lots of people do, especially when they’re talking to researchers or otherwise responding to surveys. A part of it might be attributable to the Lake Wobegon effect, from the mythical town of Garrison Keillor, where it is said all the children are above average. More technically, another driver is social desirability bias. This is where the respondent wants to provide an answer that will be looked at by others as favorable. • A recent poll asked Americans who they voted for in the last election. This poll showed Obama thrashing McCain by more than 20 percentage points -- far greater than the actual Obama margin of victory on Election Day. • When people are asked if they voted in a presidential election, the percentage of self-reported turnout is inevitably 10-20 percent higher than actual turnout. • About 40 percent of Americans say that they attend church regularly. Counting and tracking methodologies used to determine true church attendance found that about half that number can actually be found in the pews. • A number of years ago, a survey found that upwards of five million people claimed to be New Yorker magazine readers—an unlikely number given that circulation was barely above half a million. People want to be on the winning team, and want to look virtuous and smart. So when we ask them to self-report, we often get responses that are wildly inaccurate. Researchers are exploring tools such asanonymous online polling and expressionless computer avatars in order to obtain more accurate survey results. But no matter how sophisticated surveys become, there is no substitute for the careful capture of actual human behavior, as we do with video-enabled behavioral analytics to see into the realities of shoppers in the shopping aisles.
Can We Do an MRI in Aisle 11?
The search for the perfect predictor of advertising effectiveness continues. According to a recent story in the New York Times, a Yale undergraduate is using magnetic resource imaging to “study brain waves and determine why people respond to some advertisements but not others.” Emily Yudofsky became curious about the potential of neuromarketing in high school, when she worked in a laboratory that did research on the consumer response to Coke vs. Pepsi. Yudofsky’s neuromarketing company will specialize in research on public service advertising, hoping to develop anti-smoking or don’t-drink-and-drive campaigns. The article suggests neuromarketing is “tremendously controversial,” both because it is seen as “creepy” and, as scientists point out, “just because a neuron fires does not mean a consumer likes Coke better than Pepsi.” If neuromarketing is indeed effective, we will see it used for more commercial applications. It is tempting to believe that brain scans can provide a complete understanding of how consumers make decisions. However, no matter how refined this technology gets, it won’t be a substitute for the observation of behavior and the resulting insights that bring true understanding of the consumer. At least not yet.
One in a Row
A woman walks into a store and takes a cart and a shopping basket. This moment is a retail ethnographer’s wet dream. It’s a weird and interesting shopper behavior and may be something big. HUGE. Like………? Maybe it’s that the shopper doesn’t trust the cart to keep the breakables unbroken, so she’s taken the basket as a “side carrier” which will provide a more gentle ride. Hey, there’s an idea here—let’s suggest they put in padded carts. Wait. Better yet—padded compartments within the carts to hold the eggs. But that could lead to walk-offs, with customers conveniently “forgetting” their eggs until after they’ve checked out. That would be bad. Hmm. Maybe it’s that she’s a germaphobe, and thinks the basket is less apt than the cart to have dried snot or microbes of baby poop on it. That’s it! We need entry door shower mists which spray liquefied Purell all over everything that passes by. And so on. What’s unknown from this little tableau is whether a shopper who takes a cart and a basket is a party of one or really one representative of unseen millions. Maybe it’s that she’s the only one today, but the trend setter who millions will be copying any day now. Or just maybe, since this is something I happened to witness, she arrived at the store and was meeting her husband back at the meat department. It’s one of the reasons we like to use in-store video along with ethnographers when we do store studies. It’s good to be able to see things thousands of times in addition to once.
