Shopper Insights

The word “consumer” evokes images of a mindless Pac-Man chased by unfriendly ghosts throughout an endless maze, frantically gobbling up empty-calorie dots. The word “shopper,” on the other hand, conjures up a human being with a purpose, a plan for fulfilling it, and the ability to perceive, evaluate, and decide. 

Further, while Pac-Man consumes only on his own behalf, the shopper may be charged with fulfilling the wants and needs of others. Winning over shoppers requires the marketer to understand not only the shopper, but the alternatives they encounter and the often complex needs they seek to fulfill. 

Every purchase, from the simplest impulse to the most complex, is part of a journey, and any step in that journey may represent an opportunity to influence the shopper. To take advantage of these, the marketer will want to map the journey and learn as much as possible about what the shopper encounters, notices, thinks, and feels. 

Consequently, shopper research includes interviews, surveys, biometrics, neuromarketing, wearables, ethnography, and just about any other methodology you can name. The challenge is to collect these data within a realistic context while coaxing the shopper to share their most spontaneous and intimate thoughts and feelings.

Technology meets these challenges by improving access to situations and the shopper’s behaviors and emotions. Mobile devices can accompany the shopper on every step of the journey and record conscious thoughts and unconscious reactions. Online journeys can be tracked completely and influenced directly. Virtual and augmented reality can put the shopper “in-the-moment” for any moment you can imagine, even unreal ones with pressure from Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde (the ghosts of Pac-Man).

Technology also offers ever-evolving ways to collect data unobtrusively and analyze it deeply, such as purchase or GPS data, as well as help to construct journey maps. Along with more sophisticated analyses, technology can link all the pieces together and develop compelling visualizations to capture and simply communicate all the complexity of the shopper journey and how to influence it.

This showcase has broad appeal: according to the latest GRIT Insights Practice Report, most insights professionals contribute to shopper research, and it is one of the top five areas they lead. For those managing digital paths to purchase or ones that run through brick and mortar venues, B2C or B2B journeys, technology can simplify efforts while enabling researchers to paint a more complete picture of the shopper journey and identify more opportunities to influence outcomes. Even non-researchers who benefit from shopper insights will be excited to see news ways this information can be analyzed and visualized!