*Updated* Keynote: Breaking the Habit—The Truth About Shopper Behavior and How to Change It

Videoclip Below

Siemon Scammell-Katz, Founder, TNS Magazine

ROI on shopper marketing Habituation vs decision making in-store
Siemon spends much of his time following shoppers and interviewing academics to understand what people buy and how we influence what they buy.

We start out today’s discussion with a big question:
“What has the most impact on the buying point?”

Looking at the physiology of the eye, Siemon shares with us about the eye that we must know when studying eye tracking of shoppers. Our vision process is continuously moving to gather the information in front of us. Or heads are continually moving around to create the scene of what’s around us. If we can understand what information is being sent from the eye to the brain, we can begin to find out all about what the shopper actually sees in-store. Eye tracking can reveal what respondent’s thought processes are, so it’s highly important that we understand how this process occurs.

Eye movement is sub consciously controlled; your eyes are moving all the time.


Sub conscious behavior
The vast majority of things that we do, we do subconsciously—nearly 80%. If we just listen to what shopper’s tell us what they are going to do, we would be wrong. We must study what they actually do.

Category roles

The way that we shop the different categories is fundamentally different, from dairy to health and beauty. Mapping category framework is integral to understanding the behaviors of shoppers before, during and after their visit to the particular category. We need to understand what kind of category that we’re working with, is it a complex category (champagne) or a less complex category (milk).

Habit and Decisions

Subconscious behavior exists in everything we do, to differentiate the different types of subconscious processes, Siemon shares with us the differences between active and implicit learning. Implicit learning is a subconscious memory, low attention—making color the most important thing to recognize. As we move for marketing and in-store behavior, connecting color to the brand can be the most important thing we do to ensure brand loyalty.

Remember: Most shoppers buy similar products each week—it’s called habituation.

In summary, connect consumer and shopper using low and high attention understanding. Evaluate habituation and floaters and measure behavior of both groups.

Updated