What’s on ‘shopper’s mind’? The practical guide for decoding the shopper.

The Holy Grail of retail marketing and every grocery retail marketer’s dream is to get into the ‘shopper’s mind’. Despite the countless books, courses, research projects, company practices, tips and tricks devoted to the subject, understanding the shopper’s mind remains elusive for most.

What exactly is a ‘shopper’s mind’? How can it be defined? Before we proceed with the dissection, please note that this text is about the 'shopper’s mind', not the 'consumer’s mind'. Those are two rather different things. The 'consumer's mind' is related to the love for the brand, enjoyment in consuming occasions, quality, ease of usage, all those small and big, special things that constitute the popular term “brand equity”. On the other hand, the 'shopper’s mind' is activated during the shopping journey only and focuses on simple, practical questions such as the time spent shopping, the amount of the bill, the number of items that must be carried afterward, the essentiality of the items purchased, and the suitability of the items for the purpose of shopping. During shopping, subconscious and emotional aspects of the 'consumer’s mind' often gets pushed away by practical considerations like the amount of money in the wallet or the fact that the product that the shopper love is not essential or practical for the current purchase.

Taking note of all this, let’s continue with defining the ‘shopper’s mind’. For a start, we have a shopper, a certain person entering the store with a specific goal (shopping mission). Thankfully, there are various persons in this colorful world, having different cultures, religions, genders, ages, medical limitations, dietary preferences, spending power, level of education, experiences, attitudes, and political affiliations. When such a person stops in front of the shelf, their perspective cannot be considered as a unified ‘mind’. To be precise, we’re talking about potentially hundreds of different ‘minds’ who will notice different things on the shelf and select different products. To further complicate matters, each of these people is on a shopping mission, which additionally shapes and restricts their product selection criteria. A person on a grab-and-go snack mission in the morning would not choose to take a six-pack of their favorite beer brand, even if retailer were giving it away. It would be weird, suspicious, and highly impractical to walk around the city with a six-pack.

Going back to the ‘shopper’s mind’ and the marketers’ cravings to get into it, we cannot talk about the single ‘mind’, but a multitude of different minds. The ‘shopper’s mind’ is not a singular entity but rather a statistical term. Instead of a unified ‘shopper’s mind’, we should, for example, talk about 4% of 'shopper’s minds' belonging to people on snack missions, who have larger spending power, are highly educated, and prefer healthy and organic food. No matter how broadly we try to define the ‘shopper’s mind’, it will not encompass more than 5-10% of store visitors. That is precisely the reason why the ‘shopper’s mind’ term is so elusive.

Sounds too complex to handle, huh? Marketers are spending a small fortune on market reports, shopper insights, household panels, and shopper research projects, just to get a glimpse into the complex world of shopper behavior. In tackling this problem, our team at Igigi - Your guy in the store came up with a revolutionary idea, a radically different approach. Instead of trying to manage the complexity of shopper behavior and finding a suboptimal middle-of-the-road marketing approach, we changed the game by asking shoppers how we can help them and what they need. The answers provided by shoppers give a direct and 100% accurate representation of their current ‘shopper’s mind’, enabling Igigi to offer them the right solution.

Igigi provides assistance in situations that are quite common, where shoppers are unsure or don’t know what to choose on the shelf. From a retail marketing perspective, such shoppers are easy to win when the right product solution is offered. Nobody rejects a solution to a pressing problem. Unsurprisingly, our research showed that the cost of acquiring shoppers with Igigi is 50% lower compared to other methods.

For retail chains, in addition to the obvious marketing revenue, Igigi provides precise data about shoppers’ needs, a kind of accurate map of real ‘shopper minds’. Such information is essential for managing category relevance and organic growth while keeping shoppers satisfied.

Follow Igigi - Your guy in the store to learn more. Our product launch is approaching.

If you would like to be one of the first brands to try our marketing service or if you are a retailer seeking to enhance the shopping experience while generating additional marketing revenue, let me know via direct message (DM).