Shopper Mode! What is it?
Even your most loyal consumers will turn into shoppers.
We call it, the 'shopper mode'. The moment a consumer enters a store, they are no longer single-handedly trying to fulfill their need to just buy. They want variety and to have a good experience while making those decisions. They no longer remain brand loyal and are then operating in their 'shopper mode'.
This metamorphosis is so subtle that we don’t even realize how modern technology has allowed us to turn into shoppers in the convenience of our homes.
As shoppers, we no longer remain loyal to one particular brand, we transform; what this transformation does is, it essentially dictates the products that we buy which might be different from the products that we had in mind before shopping.
Pamela N. Danziger, author of the book 'Why People Buy Things They Don’t Need', writes, “consumers need a reason to buy things they don’t need,”
This statement leads us to two solid ideas. One, that buying makes us happy and secondly, that as consumers, we provide a window of opportunity to brands to entice us to buy their products. In either case, brands are the winners as they use both aspects to their advantage.
Consumers are the main target segment that companies spend a major chunk of their budget on. It defines the ‘who’ of the product or service, the sole reason for a brands existence. However, shoppers are also like your gold wild cards. They are the risk takers, the tasters, the explorers of new brands and also the people who determine stable sales in the long run as they are likely to shift to different products as they come. Adeel Ansari in his blog writes that a consumer enters a store but leaves as a shopper. So the question arises, what happens to a consumer in the store? Or is it just a state of mind that every consumer goes through?
SBXL (Shopping Behaviour Explained Ltd) wrote an article explaining 5 different types of shoppers; inexperienced, experienced, considered, Grab and Go, and impulse.
They assigned characteristics to shoppers in each category and explained how much time they spent in the FMCG fixtures. Impulse shoppers relied on emotions whereas Grab and Go shoppers relied on promotions. The reality is that the consumers aren’t limited to one category for a lifetime. Depending on the age, different product category, demographics and many other factors, consumers can be all of them at one time. Then, depending on these factors, it is a mode that the consumer is more likely to shift in while going through the experience of buying.
Apple spends billions of dollars on their retail stores every year to provide that shopper experience.
Taking a closer look at what is happening in the super stores and general stores, we come across tactics that different brands employ such as occupying the right shelf space, brand activations, food testers, activities, brand representatives etc., that all help to enhance the shopper experience. 60% of sales in the KSA are in the modern trade.
Amazon Go has managed to wow its consumers with a different and more unique type of shopping experience.
They enhanced the grab and go for their shoppers. Using your Amazon account you can get whatever you want from the shelf and go. The receipt will be emailed to you later. People don’t have to wait in long lines to make the payment.
In current diverse and competitive times, the red sign of sales and lucrative discounts push people to incline towards the shopper mode on the sliding scale. The irony of buying more and ultimately saving a small portion of that, makes us addicted to the adrenaline rush. So as consumers we need to be aware of this shopper mode and how brands are capitalizing on it. Even though some people stay brand loyal, recent trends suggest that shopper modes have a bigger role to play in how consumers buy products. Forbes summarizes this idea succinctly; suggesting that companies need to keep transforming their offerings to consumers and invest in innovation because consumer loyalty may not be meaningful to consumers who will prefer the 'new and different' over the 'tried and true'.
Below are links referred to in the article above.
Author: The Plan B team
This post is part of the Jampack thought leadership initiative to inspire professionals worldwide
Plan B is part of the Jampack group. We are a group of diversified companies delivering all the P’s of marketing under one umbrella.
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