(Use Cases for Ecomm, In-Store Shelving, and Retailer Sell-In Stories)
The Future of Shopping is changing daily and will continue to evolve in the months to come as we move past the pandemic.
I have started recruiting top shopper marketing and insight leaders from a variety of organizations for an upcoming Future of Shopping Think Tank.
Below you'll find the top 10 business questions I have been hearing in speaking with the participants of this upcoming think tank.
These business questions influence shopper based design strategies, as well as retailer sell-in stories.
An ideal way to test hypotheses around these questions is to pair virtual observation of shopper behaviour at both physical and digital shelves with implicit and explicit measurement to explain the behaviour you observe.
If you would like to learn more about how to set up your own shopper based design experiment or are interested in participating in the Future of Shopping Think Tank, please let me know.
1. Assortment: How can I simplify my assortment to make it more efficient? How should I guide SKU Rationalization given that retailers got comfortable with tighter portfolios during the pandemic?
2. Layout: How do I optimize shelf layout for maximize category and brand performance? Should I use a brand vs. segment blocking? Vertical or horizontal blocking? What is my good, better, best strategy? How does the new post-pandemic economic reality affect this?
3. Placement for Innovations: How do innovations get placed on shelf for maximum impact on both base business and the launch of new SKUs? Should we place this innovation in a single location/category or use dual placement in-store? What is the role of innovation as consumers return to spending more money outside the home?
4. POS Materials: How can we optimize our communications at shelf to drive brand salience using built-in displays? Standalone displays? Endcaps? How does this differ between ecomm and in-store?
5. Price & Value: What are the messages we should use to communicate value against competitors (price per pound, sales signs, feature vs. regular pricing)? How do we demonstrate more value across our portfolio using price/pack architecture?
6. Retail & Category Resets: How do we influence the future of the category to grow our brand and grow the category? What are the “Shelf of the Now”, "Shelf of the Next”, and “Shelf of the Future”? How has the pandemic shaped future needs?
7. Retailer Equity: How does the shopper experience influence perceptions about the retailer and how can we influence this with our portfolio? What is the impact of out-of-stock on walkrates? How can we enable our retailers to maximize their share of return to in-store shopping?
8. Omni-commerce: What are the shopping behaviours across channels and retail banners and how do we optimize our brand across different in-store and e-commerce touchpoints? What will the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic be when it comes to ecomm?
9. Physical and Digital Path to Purchase: What are the different inputs and outputs of the consumer journey and how do we optimize that experience to maximize a great experience for our consumers while maximizing growth for our retailer partners and our brands across both physical and digital path to purchase steps.
10. Category/Competitive Assessment: What will be the impact to my portfolio from a change within the category from a competitor at shelf? How do I out-compete other players that may have a stronger in-store or ecomm shelf presence?
Stay tuned for additional insights from the upcoming Future of Shopping Think Tank.
If you would like to participate or receive the outputs from this think tank, please let me know.
At Hotspex, we can help you crack your brand building challenges by helping you understand and apply proprietary human and consumer motivation insight.
