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Cultural Occasions, Not Need States

2005-02-22

BELLEVUE, WA, February 22, 2005 - The Hartman Group, a Bellevue WA-based consumer research firm, identifies 11 dominant cultural occasions that affect today's consumer shopping behavior. Whereas the more traditionally studied "need state" is only a proximate measure of purchase motivation, cultural occasions, which form in the home, are what underlie and inform that consumer need.

The Hartman Group examines these eleven cultural occasions influencing both in-store and at-home experiences in its latest report, Shopper Insights: How Cultural Occasions Frame the Consumer Experience.

Hartman Group ethnographic researchers observed that within the course of a single week consumers will visit as many as three to five retail channels as part and parcel of their routine shopping habits. Which retailer they choose depends largely on the cultural factors that provide the context for each trip. The report provides an in-depth analysis of each of the eleven cultural occasions, the four most prevalent being: Traditional Weekly, Destination, Random Emergency and Crafting a Special Recipe.

"Consumer goods companies who focus only on 'trip type' or 'need state' analysis are missing the raw and true motivations that drive consumer shopping behavior," explains Harvey Hartman, Founder, Chairman and CEO of The Hartman Group. "Cultural occasions emerge from the way consumers' live and are what give meaning and context to the way they shop."

"By definition, cultural occasions are rooted in cultural trends," adds Laurie Demeritt, The Hartman Group's President and COO. "For example, for the simple shopping task of buying milk the cultural trend of parenting results in the purchase of organic milk on one occasion, but a purchase of soymilk on a different occasion that is driven by health-related concerns. If we only study shopping trips, we never uncover this depth of analysis."

About The Hartman Group, Inc.
The Hartman Group, founded in 1989, is a full-service consulting and market research firm offering a wide range of services and products focused on consumer understanding. We specialize in the analysis and understanding of consumer lifestyles - including how they LIVE, where they SHOP and what they USE.

About Shopper Insights
Shopper Insights is the result of over 300 hours of in-depth interviews with approximately 100 individuals in stores and in their homes throughout six major cities: Kansas City, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, and Boston. The qualitative and ethnographic methods used included a unique combination of practices found to be especially powerful for analyzing shopping behavior. They included: In-Home Interviews, Social Network Parties, Shop-and-Talk Tours, Retail Anthropology, Online Focus Groups, Longitudinal Grocery Receipt Collection, and Language Analysis. The quantitative research component was a nationwide online survey of shopping attitudes and behavior of over 2,600 respondents. The sample was drawn from Hartman Interactive, The Hartman Group's online consumer panel.

For press inquiries and further information please contact:

Blaine Becker
Senior Director, Marketing & Business Relations
blaine@hartman-group.com
425-452-0818 ext. 124

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