Consumer, Shopper, Retail Expert
Consumer, Shopper, Retail Expert
A while ago I wrote what ended up being my most popular blog post yet, on the topic of creating shopper insights. It raised lots of questions, lots of comments, but still much of the feedback  focused on how hard people felt it was to actually dig out an “insightâ€. I spend a lot of …
I am probably calling this one too early. Like many extinctions, a long time may pass between the first call of a pundit to the final death knell – but here I go. Price is no longer enough, Mr. Retailer. Time to move on. Sainsbury’s Excellent “Brand Watch” campaign surely is symptomatic of where price …
In a store recently I saw a fabulous case of terrible in-store execution. I wished I’d had this picture when I wrote my recent blog post on compliance. I have no idea how this happened – there are lots of factors that could have contributed – but here is a potential (and completely fictional) scenario …
I recently wrote about some of the downsides of the self-checkout to both retailers and manufacturers, and how these unforeseen consequences could have been avoided. A week after writing this I found myself faced with a self-service check-out for the first time in a long time, and personally experienced how they don’t seem to work …
Loyalty is one of those words that is thrown around in marketing circles with incredible regularity, and it appears that it has many meanings for many people. In the same way as the word “strategy” (don’t get me started on that!) loyalty is used all over the place; unfortunately it is rarely used to describe …
A confession. I am, what might be politely called “thrifty” (and what my wife, on occasion, has called “tight”). Thrifty works for me. I don’t see it as an insult. And for thrifty shoppers like me, trips back to the UK these days bring with them an extra thrill – pound shops. Following a recent …
How better collaboration can help avoid the negative consequences of our actions Not many people deliberately screw up. Some might, but the vast majority actually do try to do a good job. As a manager, when our team makes mistakes, we learn that our first assumption is that their intentions were good. It helps diffuse …
There is lots of talk about the power of insights in marketing. Most advice I read on shopper marketing talks about the importance of shopper insights driving shopper marketing initiatives. Insights are undoubtedly at the heart of any marketing, including shopper marketing, but a recent conversation made me realize that perhaps there are many people …
In any disciple, one of the most critical steps to understanding what works and what does not is evaluation. It is essential to drive future improvement, and to enable the separation between activity which is a cost and activity which is an investment (something that delivers a return). The vast majority of the work we …
A quick quiz before we get to the questions you need to be asking yourself about promotions. Question 1: Which activity takes up the most time for marketing, trade marketing and sales teams? Answer: Managing promotions (a bonus point for anyone who said “sitting in pointless meetings” 🙂 Question 2: Seventy percent of what type of activity loses …