Category: General

Talking shopper marketing in general

Just published: Think Shopper, the book.

A concise textbook and a how-to guide for marketing students and practitioners.

Back in 2018, I mentioned I was writing a book on shopper marketing. It took longer than expected but I’m happy to announce that it’s now (self)-published.

Think shopper defines what marketing to shoppers is about and introduces a framework to do it well. Illustrated with real-life insights and examples, the book covers the following topics:

Part 1 – What shopper marketing is
• A quick history of the discipline
• The rise of the omnichannel shopper
• A new definition for marketing to shoppers

Part 2 – How to put the shopper into your marketing
• Defining the objective
• Understanding the shopper
• Designing the strategy
• Implementing the plan
• Evaluating the impact

Part 3 – Marketing to shoppers in the new decade
• Four tensions facing marketers
• The sustainability imperative
• Call to action

Think shopper also includes a rich appendix on shoppers, retail stores, and tools as well as a list of my favourite publications, books and websites.

Think shopper. Enduring truths and new rules for marketers in an omnichannel world (full title) is available for purchase on Amazon in ebook and paperback forms. 

P.S.: note I have edited some blog posts to include them in the book, but there is plenty of new and original content.

“Marketing is replaced by shopper marketing”.

“A key step in marketing history” says the President of the Global Marketing Association.

In a statement published this morning in Lake Placid (NY), A.F. Fish, the President of the Global Marketing Association declared that their members would switch the name of their ‘marketing’ departments into ‘shopper marketing’. “Since its creation in the 50s, the marketing industry has been focusing on converting consumers through the funnel, from awareness to purchase and repurchase, through preference and consideration. In 2018, the environment is way more complex and purchase behaviors far less linear than the waterfall funnel assumes. Marketing is about selling and buying. Putting the shopper at the core is just common sense”.

Hey, it’s April fool’s day. It’s a joke. I could not resist. But having said that, elevating shopper marketing can make a big difference to a business. Seriously.

In the book “How brands grow”, Byron Sharp et al, tells us that growing brands goes down to driving penetration. And that you drive penetration by simultaneously increasing mental availability and physical availability. That’s what marketing to shoppers is all about. Driving sales by making sure that a brand easily comes to mind as well as at arm’s reach while people are shopping. Shopper marketing is effective.

Shopper marketing is also efficient. It builds upon behavioral science to create solutions that help influence purchase decisions. It brings together science and creativity to convince people, in just a few seconds, to buy a product or a service. No proxies, no fuzzy metrics. In shopper marketing, you sell or you fail.

A new blog about shopper marketing

Shopper marketing was invented in the late eighties, why writing about it in 2018?

After thirty years of existence, shopper marketing is widely adopted across industries and geographies but the discipline has remained confidential for the marketing community at large. It is not studied in business schools or universities. It’s not discussed in industry events or in the trade press, particularly in Europe where I live.

To give you a personal anecdote: in a recent assignment, I had to do shopper marketing inductions to young graduates in a large multinational company. Among the twenty or so interns I trained, none of them had heard about shopper marketing before. Not a statistically valid observation but a thought-provoking one.

Ironically, shopper marketing is a powerful answer to the challenges those young graduates will face in their jobs. The growth imperative made popular by Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg Bass Institute for example. Shopper marketing is focused on generating incremental sales. At the core of every shopper marketing initiative, there is a pocket of growth, untapped so far. An unserved or underserved need that can be fulfilled. At a time when flat is the new up, knowing exactly where you can extract additional value can be precious.

I have been practicing shopper marketing for the last ten years and I love what I do. With this blog, I want to share the love and modestly contribute to raising awareness and interest for a strategic yet largely unknown marketing discipline.