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02.23.2006

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For more Hartman Group articles on SHOPPER INSIGHTS, click here...

01.04.2006 "Drive-Thru Grocery: When Is It Really Relevant"

08.11.2005 "Extending Shopper Insights: Understanding Cultural Dynamics"

02.03.2005 "Shopper Insights: Moving Beyond 'Need States' and 'Trip Types'"

02.03.2005 "What Is 'Home Experience'?"

01.06.2005 "5 Myths in Consumer Shopping Behavior"

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It's More Than Just The Shopping Channel; It's The Shopping Occasion

Traditional marketing and market research practices espouse the time-worn belief that consumer shopping behavior is largely a result of: "what happens in the store is because of the store." In our groundbreaking study, Shopper Insights: How Cultural Occasions Frame the Consumer Experience, however, a much different picture of today's food and grocery shopping emerged - one that is not rooted in the store, but in the home.

Today, it is common knowledge that an increasing number of consumers make almost daily trips to the store. Yet, the most important implications of this trend continue to elude many marketers across CPG companies and retailers alike.

Shopping is no longer just about restocking the pantry and refrigerator. For many households, the majority of their shopping trips are about getting something done. The reasons for shopping have transitioned away from, "What are we out of?" and moved to, "What should we have for dinner?" or "Is there anything you want from Kroger's because I'm going by there on my way home from the dry cleaners and can pick something up." It is these reasons or circumstances for shopping embedded in the culturally defined patterns of everyday life - which may or may not have anything to do with shopping - that we refer to as cultural shopping occasions.

For example, one such culturally defined pattern of living is the commute from work to home. Most shoppers at one time or another have stopped off at a grocery store to pick up a few items on the way home from work. This cultural occasion for shopping is what we call the After-Work Supplement. The trip home defines the conditions of the shopping occasion. Another frequently occurring occasion is when a special meal calls for ingredients not on hand, what we call Crafting a Special Recipe, which then necessitates a quick trip to the store to get those missing items. If it were not for the special recipe, there would be no trip to the store. The shopping occasion derives solely from the desire for the special meal. In each of these cases, and a growing number of others, the important element is not how short the trips are, but how fundamentally different they are because of when and why they take place.

This is but one illustration of why the store, the retail channel, is no longer the sole focal point of shopping behavior. Rather, it is the transformation of shopping as a task unto itself into something that is an essential part of some other task that has several significant ramifications for retailers, manufacturers and marketers alike:

It strips meaning from shopping as a thing and transfers it to household tasks that necessitate trips to the store. Shopping has become more purely a means to some other end, which is to say consumers think less about shopping per se than about what else they're trying to accomplish.
It reduces the cost of forgetting something on any one trip because the next trip is only a day or two away. At the same time, because each trip becomes more narrowly focused the odds of actually forgetting something important diminish. So, the risk as well as the cost of overlooking a desired item or two is reduced.
It has freed shoppers from the neighborhood supermarket, giving them the luxury of picking from whatever retailers they pass along their way. Gone is the need for one-stop shopping, despite constant protestations to the contrary, and store loyalty.
It has made marketing to planned systematic shopping less relevant. The notion that consumers will pore over circulars and flyers or amass a fortune in coupon savings as a prelude to their shopping holds true for increasingly fewer households.
It has made shopping occasions less about what happens at the store and more about what happened before and what will happen after. Household dynamics are becoming more important than static decision trees.
It has made the reasons for shopping complex and multi-faceted. A trip made ostensibly for one occasion (stopping off to grab something on the way home from work) often turns into some other occasion (while I'm here I might as well pick up the things I was planning to get this weekend and save myself a trip).

No longer can we afford to restrict our attention to what happens in the store if we really want to influence shoppers. Because consumers weave more and more shopping trips into their daily routines and habits rather than plan them out as stand-alone activities, we need to examine these practices to understand the best way to market to today's shoppers.

Take one example: the curious case of consumers who arrive at the store without the money-saving coupons they arduously clipped, collected and filed. Left behind at home, the problem is that the coupons are part of a particular kind of shopping occasion, the major stock-up trip, what we call the Traditional Weekly, which appears to be vanishing as different patterns of living generate alternate shopping occasions.

Just as puzzling is the use of shopping lists, filling a shopping cart versus a hand-held basket, price sensitivity, brand awareness, private label selection, and a host of other issues. Thinking in terms of cultural shopping occasions is one way to take into account the larger worlds of activity that happen outside the store that has a direct effect on what happens inside the store.

(Debunking) Myths That Won't Go Away

Yet, from all we've discovered and shared on "shopper insights," there are those die-hards that still believe brand loyalty drives shopping behavior and shopping behavior is about consumers filling fixed needs. Just as shopping trip types are not reliable predictors of what consumers will ultimately purchase, need states, such as those categorized by the "value conscious shopper," the "time-starved shopper" or the "responsible homemaker," do not account for all the variations in decision-making and purchases while shopping.

The concept of cultural shopping occasions was developed to provide a richer, more accurate portrayal of how consumers themselves view shopping and to place shopping in a real world, everyday context.

Another "old school" strategy, one that won't go away, is the myth that channel analysis will reveal important shopper insights. Channel analysis will not get at the "why" behind shopping behavior. Only exploration grounded in cultural occasions will deliver insights into the motivations, traits and habits that drive human behavior. Consumers, after all, don't talk like industry insiders; the term "shopping channels" isn't part of their vocabulary. When they say they are going shopping, they mention the store by name ("I'm going to Trader Joes" ) or by type (e.g., the mall, the grocery store, etc.).

More Questions That Beg Answers

There are two key areas of investigation that seem to hold the greatest potential for CPG companies and retailers because they apply to the ways consumers shop today: relevance and overlap of cultural occasions. The question of relevance has direct consequences for the kinds of stores and products consumers select when they go shopping. When a particular occasion arises, some channels (and stores) may be much more top of mind than others. Absent any barriers preventing them from going where they want, shoppers will go to the store that best fits the occasion. Making a store relevant to the most common occasions seems an obvious strategy for increasing visits. Similarly, creating the conditions that increase the transformation or overlap of shopping occasions is a way to increase the amount purchased per visit. Working the two in tandem should increase both frequency of visits and the amount purchased.

No doubt, the promise of a surefire recipe for increasing the frequency of visits and the quantity of purchases sounds rather attractive. The reality, however, is that we have a lot of questions to answer before we can promise anything. On the other hand, we know enough to know what answers will take us closer to realizing that promise and every step along the way we expect to gain insights that will justify those efforts.

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