JanSport: A Case Study in Merchandising

Promoting backpacks isn't an easy task. With as much as 80 percent of backpack sales occurring during the three-week back-to-school selling season, there is little room for merchandising mistakes and even less room for misunderstandings. This is what led Appleton, Wis.-based JanSport Inc. to want to understand the consumer thought process and design a P-O-P merchandising system to better promote its diverse line of backpacks."We wanted to know how shoppers shop, why they shop and what they do," says Janet Rothe, manager of consumer research and services for JanSport. "We told E-Lab that we wanted to get inside the shopping process."In the fall of 1997, JanSport contracted with Chicago-based E-Lab and began a two-part research study to better understand the consumer shopping experience. The first phase of the research was designed to understand the ways that backpacks were being merchandised, to get insight into the minds of consumers at the point-of-purchase, and to use that information to produce a practical retail solution. The second phase of the research involved testing a new merchandising system with hidden cameras and observational field work."One of the things that we were able to tell them was that the backpack category is so undifferentiated to begin with," says Johanna Schoss, research director for E-Lab. "Everyone was selling packs the same way, which was just by hanging them on the wall."During the first phase of the research, a variety of interviews were conducted with teenagers and parents to get a better understanding of their interaction and how that relates to a backpack purchase. E-Lab also interviewed teens about their motivations for purchasing other items, from snack foods to CDs, to gain a greater insight into their buying patterns and thought processes."You have to move beyond just that moment when they're interacting with the display," says Lisa Humphrey, director of business development at E-Lab. "You have to put that in context of everything else that is going on outside of the retail environment that motivates a purchase.""One of the things we learned from the preliminary testing was the amount of involvement from the parents' point of view," says Rothe. "We found that we need to satisfy the parents in terms of information on the hang tags and the display. That builds confidence in the quality and durability of JanSport. We also know that we have to appeal to the student because we have to have the 'cool factor' in order to be a brand."At the end of the first research phase, E-Lab concluded that many consumers were confused by the large assortment of packs and had little or no knowledge that packs were available for specialized uses."JanSport has backpacks that hold skateboards. They have backpacks with a pocket for a CD player and another for Rollerblades. If they allow people to just think of backpacks in terms of the material of the pack and its color, then people are never going to understand that there's a whole different set of backpacks available to them," says Schoss. "JanSport actually wants to communicate something different and change the way people shop for packs. That's where creating new experiences comes in, understanding JanSport's interest and the customer experience to create a new experience."E-Lab offered a variety of recommendations to the company that included segmenting the packs into key category groups and adding informative, color-coded hang tags on the packs. With E-Lab's suggestions in hand, JanSport worked with Chute Gerdeman, Columbus, Ohio, to design a P-O-P merchandising system.The new display, called the Platinum Program, divides the packs into five key groups: classic, full, tough, play and tech. A large JanSport header stretches across the display and color-coded graphics separate the packs into their various categories. Flip books and take-one brochures provide detailed information about pack sizes, materials, special features and uses.During the recent back-to-school season, JanSport shipped test displays to 17 different retail chains to gauge the effectiveness of the system. E-Lab was again contracted to observe the merchandising system in use via hidden cameras and to conduct interviews with consumers on how they used the system."We learned that there are a couple of different ways of approaching packs in terms of shopping," says Rothe. "We found that most people went to the packs first, before reading the information on the display. Some spent more time at the packs before going to the display, some spent very little time. Some people didn't look at the display at all. We found that if they went to the packs first and they didn't know what they wanted, they went to the display for clarification and to see the assortment of packs available."By watching the ways that consumers actually used the display, researchers were able to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of it. For example, one woman initially walked past the display with her husband and teenage son and later returned by herself. She spent considerable time reading through flip books and support materials to compare different features. Later, she brought her husband and son back to the display to choose a pack.The research team saw that this woman used virtually all elements of the display. Researchers noted that this woman may not represent the norm and that for a display to be effective, it has to communicate to shoppers on a broader level. "We could have just given this woman a chart so she could compare all the packs," says Ann Kauth, project manager, "but someone else might be coming in and saying 'I want a pack that's just like my brother's, except I want blue.' So how do you help that person?"E-Lab attempted to define three dominant shopping patterns and determine how one merchandising system could fulfill all three needs, while also conveying the information that JanSport would like consumers to use when making a purchasing decision. Also, E-Lab studied the various retailers that JanSport deals with in order to provide customized P-O-P and merchandising options for different classes of trade and specific retailers.Upon completion of the second phase of research, JanSport will use the findings to refine its merchandising system for a major release for Fall of '99. The company plans to expand the program into as many as 1,000 department stores, sporting goods stores and specialty stores."This is the first time the category has had a serious merchandising system put in place," says Kauth. "We're looking at different components of the system and talking about the ways in which it's working and not working. We can start to let them know what they need to do and how they can make it more effective. It's moving in the right direction, but it needs to be developed more.""In general, some elements were extremely effective and some were less effective. We felt like we were duplicating some of the information in the display and that we can trim it down and still get to the shopper," says JanSport's Rothe.

JanSport: A Case Study in Merchandising

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