Defining modern shopper marketing requires understanding the history of both retailing and shopping. Because the discipline is intimately connected to the two.
Since its inception forty years ago or so, shopper marketing has evolved several times to address the changes in the way shoppers behave and how retailers respond to those changes.
Originally, there was retail marketing. And then, in the late 90s, P&G and Walmart created the idea of shopper marketing. At that time, the so-called modern retail was booming and people were visiting large format stores to fulfill all of their needs. Shopper marketing was about creating a campaign like Shakespeare would write a drama: one place, one time, one action; in plain English, the store, the shopping trip, the promotion. The campaign was essentially an ‘event’ to increase sales in large format stores during the weekly fill-up. As defined by P&G, success would come by stopping, holding and closing at the first moment of truth eg in front of the shelf.
Entering the new millennium, retailing was evolving – and shopping too. Shoppers were diversifying their store choices depending on the occasions and the missions. Large-format stores were still dominant for the regular stock-up trip but other – often smaller – formats like supermarkets and c-stores were capturing a significant share of top-up trips and special trips. Unless conveniently located for the shopper, hypermarkets and supercenters were not the first choices to buy a few missing items. And definitely not the place to buy apparel or sports equipment. I should not forget discounters and clubs challenging them all on price and convenience. The competition was fierce. Confronted with an increasingly complex environment, shopper marketers developed increasingly sophisticated programs and campaigns. I remember a manufacturer’s shopper toolkit containing hundreds of pages of guidance and assets across dozens of sections to cover all shopping options you could think about – consumption occasions, shopping missions and retail formats.
People can switch to shopping mode anywhere, at any time
Nowadays, in the omnichannel world we live in, occasions, missions, channels, and formats are still essential but shopping has gone more fluid and ubiquitous. With shoppers getting more familiar and confident with e-commerce, new shopping behaviors are emerging. Breaking the boundaries of physical and digital spaces, shoppers hop from one channel to another to facilitate their purchases or get better deals. Shopping spreads across places, ecosystems and moments. The journey can be long or short, the stakes can be high or low, but covering the entire journey is paramount: what triggers the journey in the first place; what happens – or not – during the planning, buying and consuming stages of the journey; and finally, what influences people’s decisions.
I know that some marketers tend to focus – I could say corner – the journey in the buying phase. Wrong idea. Ignoring the planning phase, when the want and need emerge, is a deadly sin. Across many categories, it is the precise moment when people build the initial consideration set. According to a podcast held recently by McKinsey & Co, the battleground for brands is what they call the ‘active evaluation’ phase when people switch to shopping mode and draw upon past experiences, external influences and biases to list brands that could fulfill their wants and needs. Time is accelerating too. Search, planning, selecting, buying, the upper part of the journey is shrinking. “It used to take time to go from research to discovery to awareness all to purchase,” said Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg at the last dmexco in Cologne “but now, you have digital and mobile that is happening faster than ever”.
Disregarding the consuming – or using – phase, when the want or the need is satisfied, is a fatal mistake too as it reduces the shoppers’ goal to the act of purchase. People don’t purchase without a reason. They shop to satisfy a want or a need, or according to the ‘Job Theory’, they hire a brand to do a job. Knowing how your brand is doing the job and taking on board comments and suggestions from clients and fans is critical. Together with past experience, social media are more than often the most influential source of information for shoppers. We also have to take into consideration the fact that owning is becoming out of fashion in many categories. Think cars: for the younger generation, what matters is the usage, not the ownership yet the success of alternative transportation options. Overlooking the consuming phase also neglects the fact that the purchase journey is shrinking on that end too. For example, buying and consuming food can be delivered in one act, one place, one time. The industry has already coined this kind of place the ‘grocerant’, the simple contraction of ‘grocery’ and ‘restaurant’. Whole Foods is probably one of the most famous examples of ‘grocerant’ I came across so far.
Shopper marketing is about influencing people when they are in shopping mode
In the digital age, the goal of shopper marketing is to influence the decisions people make, when and where they make them. Using again the analogy with entertainment, modern shopper marketing has more to do with the creation of a TV series than a classical drama: multiple locations, multiple times, multiple actions. The desired output is not a campaign but a holistic experience leveraging the entire marketing ecosystem – brand and retail – along the journey. Creative still needs to attract, connect and close, but at the precise moments when and where brands or retailers have a chance to influence people’s decisions.
Before closing this post, I’d like to propose my personal definition of shopper marketing in the digital age: “shopper marketing leverages insights to influence people’s decisions whenever, wherever and however they are shopping”. If we deconstruct this sentence:
- shopper marketing starts with insights;
- it talks to people who are shopping to fulfill a want or a need;
- the goal is to influence decisions;
- it takes place along the entire journey – not just at retail.
Quite different from the industry definition but times are changing. What do you think?
Think Shopper 