I often hear or read of the idea that shopper marketing is all about making life easy for shoppers. As a shopper, I certainly get this: too often categories are hard to shop for many reasons. Anything that makes it easy for me to find what I want to buy quickly and simply would be great. But isn’t there more to shopper marketing than this? As a shopper marketer, my job is to get shoppers to buy my brand. If a shopper is looking for a different brand, my job is to change that behavior somewhat. If a shopper isn’t looking for my category and brand, my job is to get that into their heads. Doesn’t that run the risk of making things more difficult for the shopper? Wouldn’t it be easier (for the shopper) to allow them to buy what they want to buy and exit the store? Well yes, but it wouldn’t help the shopper marketer hit their objectives. Shopper marketing, therefore, needs to be a little more nuanced than ‘making things easy for the shopper’. – What is shopper marketing? It certainly needs to be more than just making it easy for shoppers.
Making things easy for the shopper is a good start
Whether we like it or not, most shoppers don’t like shopping our categories very much. There are exceptions, but for many shoppers the weekly trip to the supermarket is a chore rather than the highlight of their week. That love they have for your brand as a consumer, often isn’t there as they shop. Stores are often bleak environments, and poor layouts and out of stocks sometimes make finding what you want a real pain.
What is shopper marketing? The dilemma
So making things easy for shoppers is a noble goal, and one that most shoppers would thank us for. But is it enough? Brand growth will come from getting shoppers to change their behavior. So as shopper marketers we want to make it easy for shoppers to buy what they want to buy, but at the same time we want to encourage them to do something different. How should shopper marketers address this apparent dilemma?
In a recent online discussion Katie Butler shared an interesting cross-merchandising example: merchandising oral care with candy. The logic is clear: mom (or dad) is in the store buying candy – and the oral care company is using the association of candy and tooth decay to try and get mom to pick up a new toothbrush. Now, this may be in the best interests of the parent (and indeed the child). But it also runs the risk of a big guilt trip too (“Man, I really should have changed Becky’s toothbrush an age ago”).
This doesn’t feel like we’re simply making the shop easy. We’re not merely providing solutions for a shopper. We’re creating a problem (I want to buy the candy for Becky but now I feel guilty). That feels counter-intuitive, until we realize that we are instantaneously creating a simple solution to the dilemma we’ve created. There is an abundance of social psychological research (thanks to Steve Needel for all of the input here!) which ‘seems to suggest that increasing fear or concern then immediately reducing it is key to changing attitudes’. This certainly seems to be what is going on here: the shopper is reminded of the issues of eating too much candy, then given an immediate solution. Steve notes that the research suggests that this immediate and specific resolution is key to getting people to act.
Another great example of this type of shopper marketing is this shopper marketing example from GSK brand Sensodyne. Sensodyne (a toothpaste for people with sensitive teeth) elected to communicate with shoppers, not in the oral care category, by the ice cream freezer. Reminding shoppers that ice cream makes their teeth hurt is hardly making the shop easier, but with a solution just a couple of meters away in the oral care category, that tension or concern is easily resolved. GSK created a new shopper need, and immediately offer a solution for it.
What is shopper marketing?
What is shopper marketing? It seems that there has to be more to the science of shopper marketing than merely shopper solutions and making it easy for shoppers. Its totally OK to make shoppers a little uncomfortable, to make shopping harder, to create shopper problems, as long as there is an immediate resolution to that problem. In other words, a little shopper pain is OK, as long as the pay-off is worth the pain!
If you’d like to learn more about what shopper marketing is, and how it can transform your brand and business performance, check out engage: the shopper marketing experts. You can subscribe to their blog and there are links to a number of complimentary e-books too!
