EXCLUSIVE: What 'Right' Means in Delivering on Shopper Expectations
The long-held mantra of “The consumer is always right,” has been updated to reflect today’s shopping experience. Thanks to tech advancements and shifts in where and how people are buying, it’s about providing them with the right product at the right time and with the right offer.
Indeed, that phrase, and variations of it, are being used by many stakeholders in the industry, spoken at conferences, written about in blogs and as a discussion point in strategy meetings. Progressive Grocer recently talked to a solution provider who is also tuned into that guiding principle.
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“Shoppers care about what value is available to them, especially right now. It’s more of an expectation, and not so much as an ‘advantage’ anymore,” observed Diana Medina, VP, product marketing, retail, at Inmar Intelligence. “We’ve been talking about it for years, but I feel that tech and businesses are catching up to it.
What “right” means to a shopper hinges on the core attributes of value in its different forms and personalization. “When you see that so many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and high-income households are measuring their budgets very carefully, too, they don’t want to work hard to get items that are available to them. It’s about ‘Can you save me money? Can you deliver this value to me? Don’t offer me a discount for meat, for example, if I’m a vegetarian’,” Medina noted.
As they work to deliver personalization and value, retailers are facing challenges of their own, she added. “Personalization can have a big impact on the consumer but also to retailers, especially regional players who don’t have an unlimited budget and have to be more precise and predictive to engage consumers,” she said, adding, “At the end of the day, the retailer is asking for the same kind of thing – ‘How can you save me time and money and how can you make your offer more relevant to my experience as a retailer?’”
Personalized offers, created and deployed often in tandem with retailers, brands and solution providers, are at the heart of the aligned proposition around timing and value. Medina pointed out that data can be leveraged to identify true areas of growth instead of the “spaghetti-against-the-wall approach.”
“There is improvement in how CPGs and retailers are using partners like Inmar to bring them insights and give them tools that tell them where to focus their investments,” she said.
Actionable intelligence is especially critical as shoppers buy at more and different places across the omnichannel marketplace. “It’s a small percentage of shoppers who go to one main store during the week, and we see that more than 60% of consumers are switching brands. So, it’s about reaching them at the maximum receptive moment, and tech and promotional strategies need to support that approach with the right message,” Medina remarked, adding, “The tech is at a point where we can be very precise – to know that a customer is buying diapers if their niece is visiting, for example. It’s about how you own micro-occasions and very specific mission trips to be able to elevate the store for the shopper.”
Addressing obstacles like fragmentation and working collaboratively can move the needle to make that happen, she asserted. “As an industry, how can we push each other and more freely share data across the ecosystem to create an experience that feels relevant? It’s following the consumer across every touchpoint and meeting them where they are,” Medina said. “Every single interaction should feel natural and shouldn’t feel like a different brand.”
Experts from Inmar will be sharing insights on how to unlock the future of shopper engagement during next month’s GroceryTech event in Dallas.
