Technology the Key to 'Managing Shoppability'

With any number of milestone events ranging from benchmark white papers to industry research initiatives, 2007 should go down in history as the "Year of Shopper Marketing." One of the year's highlights: the Kelley School of Business' seminar program, "From Demand to Purchase: Measuring & Managing Shoppability," held Nov. 1-2, 2007 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. This retailer- and manufacturer-only event, presented in affiliation with the In-Store Marketing Institute, assembled an impressive array of CPG marketing practitioners willing to share their ideas in a workshop format. The event kicked off with demonstrations of virtual shopping technology (video tracking, 3-D simulation and electronic interviewing) at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) "Advanced Visualization Lab."A full day's worth of seminars featured presentations from some of the biggest brands in the world, including:Dave Milka, consumer insights director of S.C. Johnson, demonstrated how his company studies the shopper experience in the center store via RFID-triggered aisle-analysis simulation tools. As a result, S.C. Johnson is able to make recommendations to retailers on adjacencies, traffic flow and product visibility; Jorge Elizondo, consumer insights director of H-E-B, explained his chain's "integrative approach" to understanding shopper navigation. The company merges shopping-cart-tracking flow studies with loyalty-card and other observational data, building a complete picture that enables it to refine its store design;Sonja Mathews, director of channel insights for Frito-Lay, described the recently unveiled S.M.A.R.T. Learning Center, an ultra-advanced shopping lab with customizable shopping environments and high-tech animation on the periphery that creates the illusion of being in a massive store; Dave Williams, enterprise research and analysis svp at Best Buy, detailed how his chain has been taking "deep dives" into its massive customer database to better understand shopping behavior by segment; Sheila McKay, customer and channel insight manager at Hewlett-Packard, talked about HP's "shopper insights store" in Vancouver, WA, and how it is used for account visits and customer research;John Glace, shopper marketing center of excellence director, and Mary Scheid, shopper insights manager of Johnson & Johnson, described how to improve the shopping experience for new mothers through customer intercepts and shop-along research;Paula Payton, research affiliate, Oxford Institute of Retail Management, presented various stores from around the world - from Austrian supermarket chain MPreis to the ING Direct Cafes - that optimize shopper engagement and conversion. The centerpiece of the event, however, was the presentation by Raymond Burke, E.W. Kelley chair of business administration, and Neil Morgan, associate professor of marketing, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, of a new report en- titled "Benchmarking Retail Store and Category Performance." This pioneering study relates the physical characteristics of retail stores, departments and product categories to consumers' perceptions of retail shoppability, purchase likelihood, and store loyalty. Looking across a variety of retail formats and product categories, the study identified more than 70 elements - boiling them down to eight "dimensions" - of retail context that drive consumer engagement and purchase conversion. These include product and signage visibility, product accessibility, visual and physical clutter, product presentation and information, shelf organization, and multi-sensory engagement, among other factors. Burke says that one of the key learnings from the study (a similar session from Burke at In-Store Expo 2007 is available to members via the ISMI website) is that any retailer hoping to secure shopper loyalty must perform well across all eight of the key "dimensions" of shoppability.

Technology the Key to 'Managing Shoppability'

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI