There is no question that shopper insights will become the primary driver of the collaborative process between consumer products companies and their retail customers while shopper marketing will become an increasingly important component of a brands marketing mix. However, shopper marketing is not an end-all by itself. It is simply one component of a fully integrated business management process designed to build brand equity and enhance the effectiveness of the shopping experience. It can be an important go-to-market strategy for some companies and less important to others. Where and how it fits in a company depends on the importance of a company’s brands to the marketplace, the category and the retailer; brand consumer positioning; how to best influence consumer purchase behavior; available resources and a number of other factors.
Shopper Insights is Knowledge that Feeds Three Activation Points
In practical terms, shopper insights is knowledge that feeds three activation points. These activation points are shopper merchandising, shopper marketing and consumer marketing. Each of these activation points plays an important role in the total marketing mix.
Shopper Insights and Activation
We define shopper insights as any insights necessary to understand the shopping experience including shopper need states, shopping occasions, shopper behavior in-store, drivers behind the purchase decision at the shelf and reaction patterns to particular in-store stimuli.
Our Guiding Principles
- The following are WWA’s shopper insights and shopper marketing transformation guiding principles...the key to “Getting it Right”.
Strategy
- Develop a clear vision and strategy for shopper insights and shopper marketing to gain commitment across the organization and to guide transformation going forward.
- Determine the role of shopper insights and shopper marketing as it relates to brand strategy and the customer value proposition.
Structure
- The reporting relationship and structure for shopper insights and shopper marketing will vary based on the culture and capabilities of the organization along with current brand positioning.
- Evolve to a vertically integrated organization structure, with support processes, that provides an approximate 50/50 balance between headquarter and field shopper insights and shopper marketing capabilities.
Process
- Extensive thought and effort needs to be applied toward organization alignment principles and processes that ensure efficient knowledge transfer and integrated planning between Sales, Shopper Insights, Shopper Marketing, Category Management, Customer Marketing, Marketing and Consumer Research.
- Effective processes involve a HQ push of market wide insights and integrated marketing programs; and customer/field pull of information in terms of adapting programs to retailer specific requests related to business development opportunities.
Insights
- Develop well rounded and robust insights to understand the entire path to purchase… consumer, shopper and retailer insights.
- Shopper insights are most effective when embedded into a 360o integrated marketing approach.
- Synchronize data sources to create an information management system designed to provide a more self-serve environment and improve awareness and accessibility of available data/research.
Knowledge/Skills
- Sales, category management and customer development personnel will need to develop new skills.
- It may be necessary to recruit new expertise and experiences from other functions or from outside to drive shopper insights and shopper marketing.
Implement
- Employ a targeted and highly disciplined approach for shopper insights and shopper marketing initiatives, including retailer readiness segmentation and defined performance measures designed to maximize ROI.
- Develop a thoughtful transformation plan…How far, how fast.
- It is important to prove processes and concepts; and again early wins to build organization momentum.
Points of Difference that Set WWA Apart From Other’s
There are four significant added value points of difference that set WWA apart from other consulting firms in the area of Shopper Insights and Shopper Marketing transformation expertise.
- WWA is the one consulting firm that has taken a pragmatic approach to what shopper marketing is or should be. While many state that shopper marketing is the next evolution after category management or an end-all by itself, we believe it is simply one, but important component of a fully integrated business management process. Our recently introduced white paper entitled “Shopper Insights and Shopper Marketing- Getting it Right” is getting rave reviews and broad agreement throughout the industry.
- WWA is the one consulting firm that was selected by Deloitte Consulting, author of the Deloitte/GMA Shopper Marketing Study, to team with Deloitte in select CPG and retailer shopper marketing initiatives. The reason… “WWA’s understanding of shopper marketing; leading category management and category insight experience; deep retail operating experience and perspective; and retailer/supplier collaboration design expertise”
- WWA is the one consulting firm that through our recent introduction of our beyond category management model, Shopper Centric RetailingSM, has had in-depth meetings with a broad range of retailers regarding the subjects of shopper centricity and shopper marketing. We know where they are heading, their issues, their resource capabilities and their expectations for their suppliers.
- WWA is the one consulting firm that has met with and been exposed to the shopper insights and shopper marketing organizations of most “best practitioner” CPG companies. We have considerable insight relative to their organizations and issues.
We are leading the way in helping CPG organizations evolve to “leading edge” shopper insights/shopper marketing capabilities
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