A: When I’m shopping at my local Kroger.

No, not the “Post” as in Raisin Bran; I’m referring to the physical post, or column, that is in the cereal aisle at my store.

The scene is this: my wife asks me to go get the Multi-Grain Cheerios so she can shop in peace for 10 minutes. She says, “Get the big box, unless the smaller box is on sale,” adding, “The Cheerios are close to the post about half-way down the aisle.”

If she wouldn’t have given me that navigational pointer, she probably would have bought herself 15 minutes of peace. The merchandise presentation in the cereal aisle is such a mess, so lacking in organization, I could easily have squandered more time, forced to scan every package, not finding what I was looking for. But since she gave me the post as my pole star, I managed to navigate past the lions and tigers and bears to the Cheerios. After a moment of anxiety while I scan the shelf for validation—Ta-dah!—I find the Mutli-Grain big box not on sale! 

Contrast this with my second mission, during which my wife gets only a few minutes of peace. I go to get a 12 pack of Pepsi. No need for her directional advice in the beverage aisle. I masterfully scan the 40 feet of shelf as I walk. “Nope, nope, nope… bingo!” I find the big blue block of Pepsi products.

The folks at Pepsi understand that the central color brand block draws shoppers down the aisle, and makes de-selection faster and easier; quantity comparisons are simpler to make. If only the breakfast aisle followed this example. There’s got to be a way to orchestrate the shelves that allows shoppers to navigate and deselect with greater ease. I can’t imagine the flakes-makers are driving much trial and category growth with shelf principles like these, or the lack of them.

Yes, a better aisle experience would cause me to return to my wife and the shopping cart in record time. But she can always send me over to wait in line behind the elderly persons at the deli counter.

Having read the article about the half-mile-long beaver dam in Alberta, Canada, it occurred to me that those beavers exemplify something frequently overlooked in the retail design business, the idea that it’s okay to fail.

You would have to imagine that over the reported 2800 linear feet of dam in what is basically a flat terrain, there’s the likelihood that sometimes it just doesn’t work the way they intended.  The colony has to react quickly to failure to ensure the safety of their habitat. If any of you beavers are reading this post and would like to broaden your portfolio, by all means, give us a call. Failure is an option in design as long as it’s smart failure and failing for the right reason. If it helps the idea move forward, then it might just net out the absolute best result.

In today’s market, retail brands developing a new design concept rarely have the luxury of time. Business pressure demands short design-and-build timeframes, followed by testing and refining. The original concept gets implemented across a variety of locations and architectures the offer the opportunity to engineer a new experience. In some cases,  the opportunities never get the proper amount of attention.  But when they do, the brand benefits. Much good comes from exploring various options, thoroughly test them with consumers and then using the insights to build something even more engaging at the next location. Failing forward.

My experience tells me that some of the most successful projects that I have had the opportunity to be involved with ended up that way because they continue to improve long after the first location is opened. Those brands realize the customer is a moving target whose expectations increase daily. To satisfy them and to keep them coming back, it takes a strong resolve to continuously improve.   

I am always inspired by my surroundings and the story of the beavers is a great case study on design. If and when beavers learn CAD and Photoshop, the design community at large might have some serious competition.

While I spend my days understanding shopper behavior and applying rigorous research and analysis methods to help companies “grow categories,” I spend my weekends shopping like crazy.  With my bank account being the victim of all of these great growth strategies! As you know, retailers and manufacturers are always finding new ways to create incremental growth or, simply put, make shoppers spend more.

One of my favorite places to shop is Target. Before I even make it into the store I have generally blown $20 on the dollar spot. After piling my cart with a bunch of stuff I really have no use for, my second stop is always the shampoo aisle. Regardless of need, I always stop. Something about the colors and the arrangement of the shampoo aisle just makes me feel so clean and orderly and I generally end up picking up something guaranteed to fix frizzy hair or give me more volume.

Well, much to my surprise, my venture into the shampoo aisle a few weeks ago yielded a fantastic new surprise! The new Pantene display! Aisle violators grabbed my attention as they organized the offering by color and hair solution. That’s right, hair solutions–easily found! And not only did the aisle violators frame up the offering, but the bottle packaging was new and perfectly coordinated with the signs. You can image my excitement as I quickly zeroed in on the “fine” solutions area. I left the aisle with a whole new system of hair care.

And as if that weren’t enough, over the past two weeks I have seen TV ads, magazine ads and even a billboard all showing the same solutions-oriented campaign. This prompted me to go to the Pantene website which just confirmed the greatness of this initiative; because it, of course, had the same message.

As a shopper scientist and self-proclaimed expert shopper (at least, that’s what I tell my husband) I just want to highlight this entire initiative to all of the CPG companies out there. It has all of the key elements needed to truly bring growth to a category. First, there was obviously research conducted to understand the category needs. Clearly, the brand understands that women have very specific concerns. Second, shopper research must have been done to understand that women come into the aisle looking for a solution, and that behavior needed to be addressed. Translating those shopper insights into action is critical! Third, the in-store execution is simple, easy to understand and gives the shopper just enough information to get where she needs before closing in on her specific product. Finally, Pantene brings it all together with a consistent campaign across every touchpoint of the brand from TV to website to billboards.

This, my CPG friends, is how it’s done! 

There has been a tidal wave of automotive advertising flooding the airwaves the past few months with claims and promises of improved product quality, safety, style, gas mileage. Media spending is way up, with every manufacturer trying to entice customers back into the showrooms.  

But to what end?
Consumers hate car shopping and they don’t want to go back into the dealership. Big surprise—the shopping experience there is still one of the most frustrating, untrustworthy, and manipulative games you can be subjected to.

Add to that the fact that the recession has also caused most dealers to suspend investment in their facilities, and you understand why the thought of venturing into a dealership is bleak. Promising better on TV only to deliver the same old retail experience only fuels consumer frustration and mistrust.

Instead, consumers do everything they can to stay out of the dealership, with online research and shopping being the preferred norm. Now even purchasing online has gained popularity.

Successful brands like Apple, Whole Foods, IKEA, even Walmart, understand how to leverage the power of shopper insights to deliver game changing customer experiences that build brand excitement, loyalty and bottom line results.

Auto companies must do more to improve the customer experience in showrooms! And there couldn’t be a better time. With the  recent upheaval in the industry, the marketplace is ripe for someone with the courage to innovate and completely reinvent the paradigm.  Success will come to those who differentiate.

The upcoming flood of hybrid and electric car provides an excellent opportunity for change. Consumers already perceive these cars as different, perhaps in some ways even more like an appliance. A completely new retail and shopping experience could and should be explored.

Will the automotive industry ever learn?
Give me even one dealer out there—or a player outside the industry altogether—who’s ready to exploit a pretty obvious opportunity. They’d have more business than they could handle. That would be exciting to see.

While I was listening to WNYC Radiolab the other day I came across an interesting episode centered on choice and decision making influencers. Being a designer, I am always searching for new ideas and concepts to weave into my work, so I clicked on the link. In an hour the host took me through a whirlwind of studies examining the variations of why we choose the way we do and what factors can influence our decisions. And what does it all boil down too? 

Stress has a tremendous affect on our ability to make appropriate selection.

To quote my mother, this over-simplified answer is an “astute observation of the obvious.” However, when broken apart, the program’s individual experiments struck me as simple learning blocks that could easily be applied to a retail environment. 

Basically, if a person is over-stimulated in an environment a simple decision of what apple to buy can become ridiculously hard because there is too much information for them to just make a choice. They start to tune out their fast moving intuition to make a more educated selection on an item that they could really care less about. In the end, those who were over-stimulated tend to be disappointed.

Thinking back on several “happy purchases” I have made in my life, I can say with certainty that they were at my favorite stores. They were bought out of instant inspiration or times when I felt confident and in control. These purchases put me on a pedestal and made me feel better about myself.

In retail design, we need to understand what creates stressful environments and craft spaces that destroy those barriers. We should champion the customer by creating awareness without overload and give them a purchase they can feel rewarded about.

As I was finishing up payment at the pharmacy, a young male employee strolled into the area and struck up a conversation with the staff by saying, “That new Kotex packaging is sharp!”  Silence.  Then, apparently mistaking the silence as a request for clarification, he continued, “You know, the black packages?  They are really cool looking!”  More silence.  Based on a quick survey of their expressions, everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing, What is an 18 year old guy doing talking about feminine hygiene products?!  

Even as I grabbed my purchase and escaped the awkwardness, I began to contemplate what transpired.  Given that I spend my days knee-deep in shopper sciences, I found the situation quite compelling.  Good packaging should be, in part, disruptive, and the new U by Kotex packaging is definitely that.  The sub-brand is unique in the category, both in shelf presentation and in the “get real” tone of the advertising.  A+ on disruption. 

But…packaging should also be appropriate for the category, and I’m not convinced that U delivers on that part just yet—or that they are justified in bypassing that rule.  The new package grabbed the attention of the young male employee and made it seem accessible to him, but what does that mean for the brand intended exclusively for a female audience?  (For sure, some men do purchase these items for the women in their lives, but they are not stakeholders.  I highly doubt most women ask their male partners to “bring me something new” in the category when passing off the shopping list.)  I am interested to see how women shoppers will respond to this new offering.  Will women view the disruption as a welcome change in category fraught with pastels and euphemisms?  Will it become a signpost—a game-changing brand that other brands will be forced to emulate or accommodate?  Or, will women view it as a garish statement in a category where they are looking for discretion, security, and reliability?

Companies under pressure to stem margin erosion may jump headfirst into shopper marketing before they are ready. In doing so, they could overlook the need to solve fundamental problems in the shopping experience and end up with unpredictable results in the store.

The urge to dive in is understandably tempting. Brands that invest in shopper marketing are seeing three times the return as compared to traditional marketing disciplines. But the discussion revolves around a very small percentage of brands, such as CVS/pharmacy and Mars Snackfoods, ShopRite and Kellogg’s, Walgreens which just announced it will engage in a shopper marketing pilot with The Hershey Company, and of course the eminence of shopper marketing, Procter & Gamble. All have been working on shopper marketing for years and have an extremely high level of expertise.

Instead of starting with the shopper journey, a company should first seek its own path. Ask yourself, ‘Where do you want to go?’ From there, you need to determine how that impacts your category growth strategies, partner relationships, and competitive advantages. Then you can look at your path in light of the path of the shopper you want to have. Shopper marketing understands the shopper psychology and what drives choice, but who benefits from that depends on what their business objectives are.

The performance-boosting strategy promised by shopper marketing is real. But there are many ways to get lost in the avalanche of rhetoric and the diversity of views among practitioners. Companies need to take the time to understand what separates effective from ineffective efforts.

While we can all agree that price matters more to the consumer than ever, it’s not the be-all, end-all of shopping. At some point, the hunt for best price has to stop. And why it stops is up to the retail brand.

Shoppers attach to brand, not price. Brand—the distinct way you do business—needs to provide a reason to activate the purchase, a reason beyond price. It can be trust, convenience, fun, effortlessness, time savings, fashion or many other factors a brand makes itself known for.

Many retailers have learned the hard way that price-based competition is simply not sustainable. To survive, they need a balanced value proposition unique to the brand that makes the shopper confident she has found the right choice among similar offerings of the product or solution she seeks.

This year, retailers have made headway in the battle against “sameness” by negotiating exclusive famous name brands, making sure their private labels stand for something besides “cheaper” and by infusing the shopping experience with emotional appeal. One brand that renewed its value-plus-reason image is Old Navy. After veering off into fast fashion inspired by the designer runway, it has returned to bright basic family apparel surrounded and supported by its kitschy sense of humor. Shoppers are returning to the store and business is on the upswing.

Differentiation is crucial to brand strength. A lack of it kills value of both the brand to its owners and its worth in the shopper’s perception. Without a differentiated proposition, a company has less power to defend margins and create demand.

The past year has seen an explosion of interest in shopper marketing. Reportedly 60 percent of brands and retailers are investing in shopper marketing efforts, up from six percent previously. Most, however, admit to being in the learning stages of the emerging practice.

Finding a common language is the first challenge. The term encompasses in-store media, brand marketing, trade relations and consumer promotions, as well as resetting shelves and rethinking categories, like the new initiatives recently announced by Walgreens. Basically, shopper marketing refers to marketing stimulus that is created based on a deep understanding of the shopper. The perceived benefits include increased sales, improved customer loyalty and overall return on investment, which certainly justifies the rush of interest.

A short but impressive list of case studies, from the few retailers who’ve made their efforts public, shows that although the in-store frontier may seem like the Wild West of trade activities right now, the physical space offers significant opportunity to support growth. What’s exciting is the increased industry talk around two things. Improved collaboration between retailers and manufacturers in order to share information and build on what’s working, and a growing awareness that customers alternate between being “consumers” and “shoppers.” The switch is flipped at the point where people are actually engaged in window-shopping the store or aisle, perusing the shelves, browsing the website or paging through the catalog. Knowing what’s happening at that moment is key. That’s why a significant factor in shopper marketing is high-quality behavioral data from which to draw the actionable shopper insights that help shape strategic plans.

“We use the term to encompass the strategies and tactics that engage and influence the customer inside the store,” says Tim Murphy, vice president, Interbrand Design Forum. “It’s a more holistic take on shopper marketing that starts at the top level—brand positioning, which informs the mid-level channel strategies, retailer requirements and category management—and goes all the way down to the promotional level. For the last seven years, we’ve been working on an approach we call Shoppernomics, created around our ability to understand what drives shopper decisions and then deliver that at retail. We’ve seen some very exciting results from Shoppernomics. It has the ability to address the whole store from brand to basket and it’s affordable, unlike a lot of the tools out there that are too narrowly focused.

”One store seeing a pronounced impact from the holistic approach to shopper marketing is arts and crafts specialty retailer, Michaels. By asking shoppers why they purchased, not just what, when and how much, it discovered their need went beyond craft materials to inspiration and fun. The store itself wanted more personality, so its brand positioning was brought to life through higher level category delivery, all the way to shelf and package level.

Michaels concentrated on five categories transformational to their business. Shopper marketing helped find the most productive opportunities, optimize those spaces and allow the retail brand to shine through. The refreshed jewelry section especially delights shoppers. Innovative design, merchandising and staffing gave it a boutique look and feel, while shopper insights led to a new shelf organization with the right breakups, flow and SKU placement. As a result, store productivity has gotten a boost and customers are giving Michaels credit for being fresh and inspirational. The new store experience has craft-related blogs buzzing.

Collaboration between manufacturers and their retail partners has always held the dual promise of reduced antagonism and gains in competitive advantage for both parties. Manufacturers often have more shopper data than their retail partners, who in the past simply merchandised categories based on POS data. But behavioral data from shopper marketing shows that consumers don’t think in categories.

“I hope we see more collaboration, and maybe the current sense of economic urgency will help overcome resistance to that,” says Amanda Yates, vice president of strategy and analytics. “The toughest part of the two groups working toward a new strategy seems to be getting both of them to decide to compromise for the greater good of the category. That means moving away from the proliferation of brand extensions, excessive SKUs. Things that often lead to a less rewarding shopping experience. Shopper marketing takes your thinking well beyond the planogram.”

A deeper level of intelligence allows the retailer and manufacturer to anticipate the needs of the shopper and arrange the store to influence them, not merely accommodate them. That was the thinking behind Cadbury Adams/Halls’ study to find out how shoppers behaved around the cold remedy purchase.

When the company conducted in-home and in-store communication research to find out what was involved in the decision-making process, it discovered issues around merchandising, packaging and experience. One surprising insight was that people shopped in a manner opposite to what the company previously believed. Additionally, it realized that light-reflecting metallic packaging was hard to read and soft bags were not conducive to storage at home.

Findings such as these give a CPG company the ability to improve packaging, strengthen aisle communication and modify assortments based on shopping styles, and include strategic brand-blocking to make a statement at shelf. Such plans for orchestration of the shelf set are seeing greater acceptance from retail partners.

“When you can flow with the shopper thought process, you have a better chance of connecting emotionally,” says Murphy. “It takes relatively little investment and has a huge upside. In the beauty aisle, for example, you may find that better educating her at shelf or including suggestions for new color combinations suits the prevailing shopping style. In a case like that, you’re not spending millions on media. You’re leveraging your assets to better connect with her needs.”

With the ability to interpret insights from shopper data and translate that into the physical space, retailers and manufacturers have a better chance of getting to that sweet spot—the shopping experience that keeps people in the store longer, strengthens a brand’s position, increases share, enhances ROI, saves marketing/trade money—all the while making life easier for the customer.