Using Location Analytics and In-Store Mobile Surveys to Understand How America Shopped for Thanksgiving

To understand shopper behaviors and discover the “whys” behind shopper choices, Locately conducted a custom next-generation intercepts study during the 10 days before Thanksgiving.

Executive Summary

America went shopping in a big way the week before Thanksgiving: food and beverage for the Thanksgiving meal, cleaning products and decorations to prepare the home, and beauty/ personal care items to help the family look their best. But which retailers captured share from rivals this year? Which manufacturer shopper marketing campaigns generated the strongest awareness and impact to drive brands into the basket? And what were the key reasons behind the success stories?

To understand shopper behaviors and discover the “whys” behind shopper choices, Locately conducted a custom next-generation intercepts study during the 10 days before Thanksgiving. We invited shoppers to opt in and share their GPS data via the Locately app on their smartphone. In-store mobile surveys were triggered automatically when shoppers visited mass merchandisers and grocery stores. The results: realtime, in-context visibility into what actually happened on the shopper journey and inside the store.

Key Findings

The week leading up to Thanksgiving was a busy time for shoppers. Shopping activity was highly missionoriented, focusing primarily on food and beverage for Thanksgiving meals. Items to clean, organize, or decorate the home also played an important role. Key opportunity areas:

• Manufacturers can in?uence the pre-Thanksgiving shopper with sampling stations and engaging displays. Despite shoppers being strongly missionoriented, they still pay attention to marketing. Multi-brand activations from manufacturers like Nestlé and Kraft drove strong awareness.
• Retailers may not win new shoppers this time of year, but there is a real opportunity to grow basket size with existing loyalists. In particular, grocery retailers should leverage Thanksgiving to drive household products onto shopping lists.
• Manufacturers and retailers together can use the Thanksgiving event to redefine the channel. Pre-Thanksgiving shopping is split between the channels — with 54% of trips to grocery, 37% to mass, and 9% to club. There remains plenty of opportunity to win share and position the store as a one-stop destination.

 

View the rest of this whitepaper in pdf format here.

 

This content was provided by Locately. Visit their website at www.locately.com.