Hershey 'Experience' Creates Sweet Success

With the eye-opening insight that 76% of shoppers aren’t happy with clutter in the candy aisle and walk away with no candy in their cart as a result, The Hershey Co. wanted to create a new option for retailers. Company research confirmed that consumers have a real love and passion for the confection industry, but candy is considered the worst category to shop.Rick Price, senior manager for Hershey’s Merchandising Center of Excellence, says the company took that knowledge and “embarked on a deep understanding of neuroscience in retail” on how best to enable shoppers to navigate and find what they’re looking for.Changing shopper preferences also played a role in the development of the “Candy Experience,” a store-within-a-store concept that is being tested in stores with great results. “We opted to develop best-in-class capabilities to create fun and engaging shopper experiences to connect with Millennials, while at the same time still resonating with Baby Boomers and the iconic confection brands they know and love,” says Price.As a category advisor within most major U.S. retailers, Hershey looked for a way it could use its Insights-Driven Performance (IDP) approach to improve the shopper experience and in-store customer conversion to grow overall confection category for its retail partners. “We wanted to help our retail partners create in-store experiences that not only draw people in, but also reward them with a more satisfying shopping experience that is engaging and easy to maneuver,” Price says. “Through this approach and working with our shopper insights partners, we learned what types of elements shoppers were looking for from their candy aisle experience.” Their feedback, Price says, is what ultimately shaped the designs of the in-store displays.And while Hershey brands were to be center stage in this endeavor, Price concedes that the push to create this store-within-a-store was done, in part, simply to increase customer loyalty to the retail location and all top confection brands. The displays are focal points of the Candy Experience – with toppers shaped like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey’s Kisses, graphics of unwrapped candy, bright colors and convenient organization by usage occasion such as candy dish, premium, movie & snack and grab & go.“A lot of consumer research went into the design of the in-store displays to build upon the science of how shoppers navigate and what makes an emotional connection,” Price says. The curved aisles and white fixtures provide a clean, less-cluttered look and are perceived as more inviting to shoppers, and since shoppers can really only visually process about four feet of space at a time, he says the design and division by usage occasion improves findability and gives the perception of greater variety.“We also wanted to create fun experiences for shoppers with some of these iconic brands,” he says. “We’ve found that shoppers are actually stopping and taking selfies by the in-store displays. The displays are helping to establish an emotional connection with our brands and are increasing aisle dwell time. This is literally creating a shopping experience for consumers that takes them out of their usual shopping routine.”As of late February, Hershey is testing the concept in one Winn-Dixie (Southeastern Grocers) store and three Cub Foods (Supervalu Inc.) locations. Price says his team works with each individual retail partner to design custom in-store experiences that will yield the best results based on insights and their customer data. While brand elements and overall design are consistent across stores within the Cub Foods locations, each has a different layout. “There’s freedom to create while still adhering to some core design principles,” says Price.The team at Hershey and each retailer aligned on joint goals at the beginning of the process, sharing insights and data on a quarterly basis to continue to track and measure success, Price says. The goal was to deliver incremental confection category sales growth of more than 25%, enhance shopper loyalty through a better shopper experience, and get ROI payback in two years or less.While Hershey executives expected confection category growth, the results have surpassed initial forecasts. Since the launch at Winn-Dixie 12 months ago, the store has seen sustained double-digit lifts (more than 25%) in category sales.Shopper feedback points to the simplicity, convenience of the concept and a fun, engaging experience. “The improved customer experience at Winn-Dixie has led to greater overall shopper loyalty and satisfaction, and has greatly enhanced our understanding of the shopper’s needs,” Price says. “All of these learnings will be key as we continue our work with additional retailer partners on designs that are customized specifically to their stores and shoppers.”“This is literally creating a shopping experience for consumers that takes them out of their usual shopping routine.”— Rick Price, The Hershey Co.Both the Winn-Dixie and Supervalu initiatives were part of one-off tests to help retailers plan for future store openings or remodels that put an emphasis on enhanced shopping experiences. Based on learnings from these initiatives, Price says Hershey has “a solid playbook of experiential solutions” that can be adapted to meet a variety of retailer store formats. “We’ve learned that a positive ROI can be achieved in less than two years in stores that sell $150,000 of confection annually.”Patty Fishman, vice president, health & wellness/general merchandise, Supervalu, says the addition of this confection area is helping the retailer exceed shoppers’ expectations and create a real point of differentiation every day. “It has delivered an entirely new level of engagement for our shoppers in those particular stores,” she says. “It really has provided a more immersive retail experience and gives them a new way to interact with the category.”The “Big Brand” elements in the form of the Hershey’s Kisses, Reese’s and M&Ms (from Mars Inc.) fixtures have shown how strongly those brands resonate with shoppers in the category, she notes, adding that sales of products on those particular fixtures have delivered sustained, triple-digit lifts since the installation in addition to double-digit, sustained category growth overall.Supervalu’s decision to move forward with the Candy Experience program came as a result of strategic meetings with Hershey around the attributes of the confection category and the potential growth to be unlocked through this project, Fishman says. It was one of a number of category initiatives undertaken by Supervalu over the past two years, including the addition of best-in-class front-end fixtures and dedicated seasonal space in all of its stores.“We felt it was critical to improve upon the fundamentals of the confection category within our stores first before moving forward with this initiative, but we have now built a strong and sustained business model we’re continuing to implement through our partnership with the team at Hershey,” she says, adding that it was very much a collaborative effort.Speaking to the differences between the final execution of the three stores, she adds that the results have been highly consistent in terms of the category sales improvement as well as the sales lifts from the branded fixtures. “That, in itself, is a testament to the potential that exists for this type of in-store experience, as we look forward this year to the next round of installations.” The partners will continue to evolve the experience and provide the best solution for each additional store, she says.Wild Blue Technologies, De Pere, Wisconsin, handled the design, and DGS Retail Inc., Chicago, produced the in-store décor and fixtures. Steve McLean, president of Wild Blue, acknowledges that not all categories are as playful or have such a strong legacy of emotional connections with consumers. “Confection is simply a fun category to innovate,” he says. “The colors, shapes and brands are iconic, and it’s a category full of potential to deliver happiness.”Working with different spaces in each store, McLean says that designing well-thought-out solutions to anticipated challenges is always a component of the innovation process. “While the products and materials used were all relatively familiar, it is how those components were leveraged to create forms and spaces that delivered the differentiated shopper experience.”The collaborative effort continued through to the producer, DGS Retail. Transforming the high-level concepts and renderings into reality required high-level design and engineering, prototyping and even the creation of custom-molded, handmade components, says Tom Vogt, president of DGS Retail. “The biggest challenge we faced was with the creation of the ‘candy toppers.’ Hershey wanted these large replicas of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and M&M’s to be so realistic and authentic that they would literally make you want to take a bite out of them.”Price says the partners learned a lot about the level of customization needed to seamlessly integrate the displays within each store’s unique layout as well as what factors drive the most engagement with shoppers and lead to more confection purchases. “These projects take a minimum of four to six months to execute, but it’s time well spent as evidenced by the results we’ve seen to date. Our goal is to grow our partnerships with other retailers to expand these in-store experiences to more locations and allow more customers to engage with these iconic confection brands in the future.”

Hershey 'Experience' Creates Sweet Success

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