Tag: journey

people decision journey

Shopper experience management

At a certain level of abstraction, everything is possible but can we really manage shopper experiences?

Building on a previous post on journeys, I wanted to discuss another trending topic: the shopper experience.

Digital is reshaping shopping. Search, planning, selection, payment, every step of the path to purchase can shrink – or expand – depending on the wants, the needs or the moods of the shoppers. Selecting and buying a product has never been so easy. Shifting to competition too. At any point in the journey, competitive brands and retailers are just a few clicks away.

Everyone agrees that traditional mass media and sales activation are too blunt and simplistic to effectively influence shoppers and encourage them to buy. Shoppers don’t automatically rush to stores to buy a product just because it’s on air. Shoppers don’t pick a product on a shelf just because they can win a trip to Disneyland. Basic digital techniques like personalization and retargeting are not necessarily effective either. Shoppers will not click to buy a product just because they see the same message on every single website they visit. All the more so if they have just bought the very same product, or its closest competitor, online or in a store. It’s not because you can advertise online that you should. Actually, in many cases, it’s pretty certain you should not. The digitally empowered shopper is not a moron, it’s you and your friends – sorry Mr. Ogilvy, I twisted your quote.

In the digital age, shopper marketing has to be more sophisticated. Welcome to the experience era. The concept of experience is starting to be widely adopted by the shopper marketing community. But as for ‘journey’, ‘experience’ is one of those words that deserve a proper definition. If you look at the dictionary, ‘experience’ is a noun coming from the Latin verb ‘experiri’ meaning ‘test’ or ‘try’. Oxford defines it as the “practical contact with and observation of facts or events”. Cambridge suggests “something that happens to you that affects how you feel”. And there are a few others along the same lines. If you compile all of them, an ‘experience’ is a concrete thing, you personally see or interact with, that touches you emotionally, in a good or bad way.

If we turn the general definition into a marketing concept, a shopper experience would result from an action or a series of actions, that shoppers take or that just happens to them, and that shift their mindset or their behavior. Managing the shopper experience would mean aggregating multiple actions, active or passive, at multiple times in multiple locations across multiple ecosystems to try to influence people at the precise moments when and where they are likely to make purchase decisions. You will notice that I use the verb ‘try’ to be faithful to the etymology of the word ‘experience’. But even trying would be a daunting task.

My view is that you cannot manage the shopper experience per se – shoppers are in control. What you can do is to try to guide and transform the experience through your actions. A bit like in Westworld. For those who do not have pay-TV or simply do not watch TV at all, Westworld is an HBO TV series taking place in a theme park re-creating the Wild Wild West. Visitors are guests and local inhabitants host them. But hosts are kind of special: they are humanoid robots programmed with certain skills and feelings. Guests are free to choose the places they go to, the activities they participate in and the interactions they have – or not – with hosts. Even if the locations and the actions are the same to start with, guests are in control and the experience is truly unique for each and every guest. Guests are in control. What happens with shoppers is very similar. Shopper marketers activate or create touchpoints, program interfaces, and train sales assistants and call center operators, but they don’t manage the experience; shoppers do.

westworld-season-1-image
Image: Westworld Season 1. 2017. HBO

If you think about it, you cannot even script the shopper experience – there are simply too many combinations. You have to focus on the moments that really matter, when and where mindsets and behaviors can change. That’s what’s happening in Westworld. The stories are written in advance, the mindsets and general behaviors of the hosts are programmed. But not everything is scripted – and the sequence of events in a scenario evolves depending on the interactions between the hosts and the guests. And – attention spoiler – there might be bugs. Going back to shopper marketing, all end-to-end experiences cannot be described. So shopper marketers need to make a choice. They need to focus on the most dominant journeys. But not only that: they need to choose the moments of those journeys when and where they under-deliver against shopper expectations, under-perform against their competitors or simply want to make a difference. Once done, they must redefine the actions that need to happen in those particular moments, whether they are happening online or offline, active or passive, human-to-machine or human-to-human. And they should have crisis scenarios ready in case something goes wrong. Easier said than done. All the more so that some of those moments may not be easy to access and transform – think about a retailer store or a community website for instance.

How do you do that in practice? Shopper experience is a new territory but there is a rule of thumb, inspired by digital UX: before thinking of transforming shopper experiences, you have to understand them. In concrete terms, shopper marketers have to collect, analyze and integrate data about consumers and shoppers, categories and products, channels and customers, occasions and missions, mindsets and behaviors. Then, they describe the experiences shoppers go through along their journey to fulfill a want or a need. Thanks to research or just anecdote, they identify the pain points or the gaps, wherever and whenever they occur. As soon as shopper experiences are documented, pain points or gaps identified, shopper marketers can determine the actions to fix them. They can choose to use more traditional shopper marketing tools like packaging, retail design, in-store communications and promotions; or digital marketing tools like social media, mobile apps, location-based marketing and augmented reality; or, in most cases, a combination of them, leveraging the ecosystems they operate in. Once the actions are defined, messages and touchpoints are optimized or created, before being put into the test. And if shoppers react positively and budgets allow, successful pilots can be deployed at scale.

To succeed in transforming experiences – and ultimately influencing purchase decisions – shopper marketers need to simultaneously master data and creativity, journey mapping and omnichannel communications, behavioral change and shopper-based innovation, cross-platform measurement and real-time decision making. More sophisticated than creating a display, a promotion or an online ad, isn’t it?

Shoppers are creatures of habits

4 inspirational books to help shift shopper behaviors.

In a recent article I tweeted about, Strategy+Business commented the PwC’s seventh annual global survey of consumers. The title and the content of the article ‘Competing for shopper habits’ was really good food for thought and encouraged to write this post.

In shopper marketing, there is a rule of thumb: only a mere 5% of purchase decisions are rational and the remaining 95% are purely intuitive. If, most decisions happen in the subconscious mind, can we really compete for shopper habits? There are 4 books I find particularly inspiring to address this question.

“Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman.

The most famous researcher who dismantled the myth of the arch-rational decision-maker is the 2002 winner of the Nobel Prize in economic science, Daniel Kahneman. Ironically, he is not an economist but a psychologist – maybe another manifestation of the shoemaker syndrome. Kahneman proposes an alternative decision-making theory, more faithful to human psychology, called the “prospect theory”. But his work is more often epitomized by the System 1 – System 2 duet.

According to Kahneman, people are essentially relying on two systems when making decisions: a “System 1” using association and metaphor to produce a quick and dirty draft of reality, and a “System 2” drawing upon explicit beliefs and reasoned choices to produce a more complete and accurate picture of reality. “System 1” is fast, intuitive and prone to errors. “System 2” is slower and more rational but also labor-intensive and therefore way more tiring. That’s why instead of systematically analyzing every single situation and weighing the pros and cons of every option, our brains mostly rely on System 1 to make day-to-day decisions like purchases. In a nutshell, people are not rational when they are making most of the decisions they make.

“Predictably irrational. The hidden forces that shape our decisions” by Dan Ariely.

Dan Ariely, a professor of economics at MIT, and an evangelist of behavioral economics develops an interesting argument: people are not capable of consistently making the right decision for themselves. But the good news for shopper marketers is that they do so in ways which are systematic and repeatable – hence the subtitle of his book, “Predictably irrational: the hidden forces that shape our decisions”. What matters, he says, is to understand when and why people deviate and make irrational decisions.

This is what you can see on my bookshelf

“The Power of habit: Why we do what we do and how to change” by Charles Duhigg.

The New York Times business reporter, Charles Duhigg suggests that habits can be changed – if we understand how they work. Although not focused on purchase decisions, his approach is valuable for shopper marketers. According to the author, the neurological loop at the core of every habit consists of three stages: the cue, the routine, and the reward. When a task is done repeatedly, the brain anticipates the reward and a ‘craving’ forms. To change a habit, marketers need to understand the craving and find new ways to satisfy it. Interestingly, the research conducted by Duhigg shows that changing the routine – not the cue or the reward – is the most effective way to break the habit cycle. He also shares three drivers of success: familiarity, social commitment, and individual empowerment.

“Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness” by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein.

Nudging is another interesting concept for shopper marketers who aim at influencing behaviors. Richard S. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, professors in Economics and Law at the University of Chicago, established it in their best-selling book back in 2009. Their key argument is that details that may look insignificant can have a major impact on people’s behavior. Human beings, they say, often act in ways that seem detrimental to their own wellbeing: eating junk food, spending conspicuously, smoking cigarettes or failing to save money for their pension. Most efforts of private and public institutions to educate people about the risks are proving unsuccessful. Gentle “nudges”, rather than prescriptive “nagging”, are much more likely to drive real shifts in behavior. They use a now-famous example on how to best drive healthy food eating. “Putting the fruit at eye level [in the supermarket shelf] counts as a nudge,” they say. Banning junk food does not”.

If you have a book to recommend in that category, please feel free to leave a reply with the title and author.

Journeys. What journeys?

Consumer, customer, digital, shopper, …, is there a way to align on a single definition?

Previously on this blog, I have highlighted the importance of the journey to understand people’s behaviors and inform the development of a shopper marketing program. But what journey?

The fact is that the marketing landscape has grown increasingly complex, and paths to purchase are no longer sequential nor linear. The good old sales funnel model in use in marketing for decades is not working anymore (Awareness, Preference, Consideration, Purchase, Loyalty: do you remember?). The cascading funnel “fails to capture all the touchpoints and key buying factors resulting from the explosion of product choices and digital channels, coupled with the emergence of an increasingly discerning, well-informed consumer” said McKinsey & Co in their now-famous article from 2009.

Today, the journey term is well established in the marketing community and even beyond. Nowadays, when you join a meeting, everyone talks about journeys: consultants, creative agencies, media shops, digital giants, and… shopper marketers. But do they really talk about the same thing? Consultants tend to talk about ‘consumer decision journey’, creative agencies about ‘consumer journey’, digital shops about… ‘digital journey’ whereas shopper marketers often use the term ‘purchase journey’.

Embracing the journey as a marketing framework is great but do we really need so many journeys? Probably not. I’d like to offer my point of view on how to bring everyone on the same page – or more literally, on the same map. But let me share a couple of considerations before.

Firstly, marketers realized lately that talking about consumers or shoppers was reductive and somehow flawed. There were no such things as shoppers on one side and consumers on the other: there were people. And often the same people but in different modes – shopping or consuming. Focusing on one or the other was preventing marketers from holistically understanding people’s mindsets and behaviors and communicating with them effectively. They were not connecting insights and actions taken at different stages of the journey.

Secondly, the concept of the ‘consumer decision journey’ has been massively adopted by the industry but in most journey sequels, the word ‘decision’ has disappeared. This simplification is not benign. Journeys do not just distill into an exhaustive list of the touchpoints and messages people may have seen or engaged with. What really matters is to capture the moments during which decisions are made by people, and how they can eventually be influenced. Because it’s only when you understand the role, the relevance and the impact of those moments that you can precisely select the touchpoints and craft the messages. Context and content, not one or the other.

The People Decision Journey

To bring it all together, I’d like to suggest an evolution of the seminal ‘Consumer Decision Journey’ into the ‘People Decision Journey’. The ‘People Decision Journey’ would be a framework mapping all the interactions that happen when people shop to fulfill a want or a need in a category of products or services during their everyday life. A framework capturing the different mindsets and behaviors across the different modes people go through – planning, buying, consuming, using, or reflecting on their purchases. A framework simultaneously providing the macro-view of the key phases of the journey as well as the detailed view of the steps – or micro-moments as proposed by Google – where interactions are happening and decisions are made – online or in real life.

Learnings from journey research experts

Take-aways from two insightful events from late 2017.

As briefly mentioned in an earlier post, in the last quarter of 2017, two global players, McKinsey & Co and Geometry*, who have been looking at journeys for the last eight years or so, broadcasted respectively a podcast and a webinar, to share observations and reflections about their journey research practice. Talking to colleagues and clients, it seems that the two events have been largely unnoticed which is a shame considering the insights they uncovered. Let me share a topline summary.

McKinsey & Co: being in the initial consideration set is critical for success

Looking at data from more than 125,000 consumers in about 30 categories, McKinsey & Co found out that only 3 of the 30 categories were ‘loyalty-driven’, while the other 27 were ‘shopping-driven’. In other words, they demonstrated that loyalty was a myth for a majority of categories. Within those 27 categories, the dominant behavior was ‘switching’: 58% of shoppers were buying a different brand from one purchase cycle to the next. The key conclusion they drew was that it was critical for a brand to feature in the ‘initial consideration set’: 70% of brands were actually chosen out of this short-list. Therefore, the battleground for brands was 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 needs.

I don’t disagree with their conclusion but, as a shopper marketer, I’m also interested in the 30% of brands selected later on in the journey. In between the lines, it tells me that activating shoppers along the journey to displace incumbents can generate positive outcomes.

Geometry: the levels of risk and involvement are key variables to segment purchase behaviors

Building on the analysis of 66,000 shopper journeys across 38 categories, Geometry found out that differences between categories and markets were based on the effect of only a couple of variables. The starting point is that no shopper wants to make a bad decision. Against this statement, Geometry identified two criteria that discriminate people’s behaviors: firstly, the level of risk associated with the purchase decision and secondly, the level of involvement in the buying process. When you map journeys against those two axes, three behavioral typologies appear: ‘guesswork’, which is low risk/low involvement; ‘copying’ which is some risk and some involvement; and ‘research’ which is high risk/high involvement. While diverse behaviors can be observed, understanding the dominant behaviors in a category and a market can help shape the overall strategy to meet the needs of the majority of shoppers.

Once again, this is a very interesting finding for shopper marketing: if the two variables above – or proxies – are present in your dataset, you can focus your activation efforts on the main behavior in your category and ultimately increase conversion.

The above paragraphs are only short summaries and I strongly encourage you to read the full transcripts and associated reports.

McKinsey podcast: “Driving business growth by zeroing in on the consumer decision journey“. December 2017.

Geometry webinar: “Shopper marketing: Purchase journeys, behaviors and pre-triggers“. September 2017.

*Disclaimer: Geometry is my employer at the time I’m writing this post but the views I’m sharing are my own and do not represent those of the company.

Shopper marketing in the digital age

It’s not just about the store anymore.

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?