How Deep Ethnographic Insights Help Drive Emotional Connections with Shoppers, Michelle Adams and Donna Romeo of Frito Lay

What exactly is ethnography and what does it have to do with snacks? According to Michelle Adams and Donna Romeo of Frito Lay, it is an inductive research method that relies on indepth interviews, video, analysis, participant observation, re-enactments and so forth. The mega-snack maker has been using ethnographic research to drive consumer-driven innovation in its overall shopper marketing programs.

The executives presented a case study on the 360 Shopping Process. Its goal is to understand the food shopping cycle from a holistic perspective using ethnography.

There are three phases to today's shopping:

(1) Pre-Shop (make list, gather coupons, research via web and word of mouth)
(2) Shopping Experience (provide consistency in the store; use end caps as anchors)
(3) Post Shop (food is easy to store in pantry and fridge; got value via deals; pleased family).

Nowadays, perhaps because of the recession, Mom has taken on more responsibilities and sometimes opts to stay at home with young children.

Three key insights:
(1) The New Frugality (Mom bears the brunt of deciding no Disneyland vacation this summer)
(2) Wants vs Needs (nutrition and main meals are first)
(3) More work and less pleasure.

Times are tough. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

OPTIMIZING CENTER STORE MEAL SHOPPING: A CASE STUDY ON SHOPPERS AND CONVENIENCE MEALS, Bob Samples of Hormel Foods

Hormel Foods, long famous for canned meats and stews, believes that "Convenience is King." 68% of consumers feel the same way, but only 35% said they knew where to look in the store to find convenience lunch items. They also said that they were confused by what they described as "too many products out there." Thus the challenge became "Improve the Shopping Experience" by making the search for convenience food items more intuitive for shoppers AND more profitable for retailers.

Because research indicated that consumers shop by need state, Hormel advocated creating a Convenience Food Aisle which would contain all convenience meal occasion items in the same place, instead of having them scattered throughout the store. Working in partnership with several major retailers such as Family Fare, Food Lion, Spartan Stores and Winn/Dixie to create this Convenience Aisle, anchored by microwaveable soups adjacent to ultra convenient products (meals that can be prepared in five minutes or less).

The results were impressive. Bob Samples told attendees at the Shopper Insights Conference that this solution works because ultimately it is for an aisle, ot just for Hormel Food Products. And retailers that implemented the Convenience Food Aisle outpaced competitors in their market by 19% in this category.

ORGANIC ETHNOGRAPHY: CAPTURING TRUE CONSUMER INSIGHTS WITHOUT INTERFERENCE, Daila Bufford of Psyma International

While Daila Bufford, Senior Consultant with Psyma International, does not believe that any single research technique is a panacea, she extols the value of ethnography (in-home observation and discussion) as the best way to assess lifestyles and understand the ways in which consumers use and store particular products.

At this afternoon's breakout session at the Shopper Insights Conference, Bufford detailed three rescent, and very different, ethnographic studies that she has been involved in. The first involved interacting with automotive services sales associates; the second, consumer interaction with products in public restrooms; and the third, understanding how females choose, use, store and transport cosmetics.

As ethnographic studies, all these projects employed the same basic components: observing and assessing the environment; interviewing the consumers; sending the consumers out on mystery shopping exercises, during which hidden cameras videotaped the experience; reviewing the tapes; debriefing the consumers; and then observing how the consumers used and stored the products involved.

And the key take-away? Ethnography is a valuable research tool because of its ability to turn the participant into the researcher.


Contact information for Daila Boufford:

Daila Boufford | Senior Consultant
Psyma International Inc. | a PSYMA GROUP company
661 Moore Road, suite 120 | King of Prussia, PA 19406 | USA
Phone: 610-992-0900 ext.114 | Fax: 610-992-0905
daila.boufford@psyma-usa.com | www.psyma-usa.com

In-Store Exposed: What will appeal to tomorrow’s shoppers in this new world?

Videoclip below

Panelists:
Candace Adams, SmartRevenue
Chris Borek, Target
Tom McCann, Staples
Ryan Mathews, FedEx

Moderator:
John Dranow, SmartRevenue

What this evening’s discussion will focus on is the future, product proliferation, media fragmentation and unlimited information (and how these elements) have created an environment in which 50% of decisions are made at the point of purchase. There has been a paradigm shift from big brands, big media and traditional research working to the challenging present where differentiation is essential, impulsivity is required and smart media is a winner. We now have skeptical and highly informed consumers.
Now it seems that economic volatility and changing values have created an uncertain future that has an identity defined by non-tangible assets and the conspicuous accumulation and consumption of goods.
First Panel Question:
“What do you think the future is going to be?”
Candace Adams: We are on the edge of radical change with retail. We will begin to see a huge push. Retailers will be required to lead, to follow or to move out of the way. Thinking about a mall, how many more customers can be brought if I am collocated with other retailers? Some retailers try to tap into the fact that customers are time starved, so we’ll see more retailers following suit. So many retailers have been pushed out of the way, Linens&Things, Lord&Taylor and the auto industry, for example. Consumers are becoming very savvy and we’ll being to see a proliferation of in-store messaging.
Chris Borek: At Target we look at a few different things, we are looking to become more transparent and we think about presenting the shopper with what she wants. Specifically from a store and from a retailer perspective, she wants to know what is on sale, what is new and what things matter the most. Don’t be complacent because your brand needs to evolve.
Tom McCann: The retailing world of the near and possibly distant future means that we will see about 35% of shoppers will have money and be ready for luxury but the majority of customers will look for value. We can’t see the credit card crunch ending soon, and it makes shoppers think more about the purchases that they are going to make.
Ryan Mathews: I live in Detroit, we have been in a recession for 30 years now. I think that we will see more people living under one roof and I don’t think that they will necessarily be all family. The idea of family will evolve and change as people cut back and look for ways to stretch their money. We are on the verge of perpetual change at retailing. Things will never be the same—ever and change will accelerate like a “snowball down the mountain.”


Second Panel Question:
“How are you preparing for the future or how would you recommend others prepare for the future?”
Candace Adams: One of the things that should be done is to enhance customer loyalty and moving away from just wanting to turn a product. By doing so, competitors will become more savvy and steal those customers from you. No longer are we students of commerce, we are students of psychology and behavior. It’s important to embrace technology as customer’s become even savvier. It’s also important that you take ownership in your retail space. You should make your shopper’s experience clean and clutter-free. Be true to your brand and don’t go off strategy.
Chris Borek: We are doing things that we haven’t done in the past, but providing price points in advertising. There has been a departure from shiny glossy figures to the affluent, savvy soccer mom who is the CEO of her family. Target is looking to a multi-channel focus to create a guest experience; Target provides information where she wants it when she wants it.
Tom McCann: It’s about brand, how you treat your brand and using technology to connect with your shoppers. Being where your shoppers are when they want to hear from you. Over the future, small business people are very conscious about value and will be continually interested in value and quality and making sure that they understand how much Staples values them and their role as business owners.
Ryan Mathews: Uncertain does not mean unknowable. The future will be science and social science and art. We should create sustainable relationships with customers, a lifetime relationship with a customer. “You have to own your own identity as a retailer,” Candace Adams and Mathews is in agreement. In a retail environment you create your identity around the things that you have available to your customer and that is an art form. Information, in and of itself can be dangerous.
Candace Adams: It will be crucially important moving forward to be instilled in the digital technology around us, to connect with shoppers.
Ryan Mathews: Increasingly, customers will be agnostic about platform they will enter and exit wherever they see fit. Digital media will make it easy for everyone to be a marketer of a particular product. You should use these tools in the digital space but use them naturally.
Chris Borek: It’s about earning her trust, it’s about figuring out how she really feels when she thinks of Target first and then other retailers second.
“What about bad online reviews?”
Tom McCann: When you open up your websites for reviews, you have to accept that sometimes customer comments may be bad or detrimental to products.
Ryan Mathews: You are either open or you’re not.
Chris Borek: You have to be a part of the conversation, you just can’t avoid it.
Final Thoughts:
Candace Adams: You must continually work to evolve yourselves. It should never be static.
Chris Borek: Knowing what you stand for and knowing what you don’t stand for. Figure out what is appropriate to evolve and not deviating from that evolution.
Tom McCann: Your brand and your customers, how you are going to relate to your customers and looking at how to adjust your strategies to those things around you is so important.
Ryan Mathews: Challenging times produce great successes.

Updated

Improving Your Payback: Keys to Assuring that Shopper Insights are Used and Activated

Bruce Vierck, VP and Andy Cremer VP, Retail Planning and Design, RTC


Preconceived Ideas Limit Success

As shopper marketers, you get a lot of ideas and solutions thrust upon you from brands to retail but you get handcuffed to figure out what the real solution can be to success. Working with a beverage company, RTC started out at the water aisle, which needs sectioning to properly appeal to the shopper. Shoppers in the water aisle are very educated and savvy consumers, so research had to be done to figure out a solution that should work for the shopper, for the retailer and for the brand. RTC did a “quick and dirty” research of interviews, feedback, etc. RTC gave participants tasks like finding specific brands and then recorded what shoppers did was surprising. Participants sometimes did not notice signage pointing to a product and had difficultly finding their specific product among the bevy of brands.

RTC identified key principles:

Shoppers look for “red or blue” (Coca-Cola or Pepsi)

Shoppers filter and brand logos on signage

Shoppers have difficulty locating new products

Shoppers often look down, rarely do shoppers look up

So what RTC did was created a “color” coded aisle, making Coke framed and working to frame other big name beverages by color. It’s important that we start by framing the problem.

In the dairy aisle, it has not changed its overall organization in the past 50 years. What RTC wanted to get to was, “what is the path to purchase?” “What drives a purchase?”

They asked participants in the study of the dairy aisle to make a journal about their purchases of dairy products and RTC did “shop alongs” with participants to see how they make purchases and what is the most important to them and to their family. What occurred is a transformation of the dairy aisle to make sure that shoppers get information quickly and are able to make purchases based on what’s important to them as shoppers.

There is no bridge from knowledge to vision.

RTC did a study for a cell phone manufacturer within the Big-Box retailer space. Shoppers didn’t understand that they could walk out of the store with the phone after the purchase and shoppers were unclear on the process involved to purchase the cell phone. Because the Big-Box retailer had such low prices, many shoppers did not believe that the phone was “real” because the purchase was so low. It was an interesting learning experience for RTC. They were able to put out display cases for the products to show the shoppers that the items were real. Utilizing display cases, despite the price will instantly ensure a product’s credibility to the shopper.