Mobile Promotions Trump Brand Loyalty for Consumers: Study

Nearly 75 percent of consumers would switch brands if offered real-time mobile promotions delivered to their smartphones while shopping in a store aisle, according to the second in a three-part series of research studies on smartphone owners’ in-store experiences sponsored by Boston, Mass.-based AisleBuyer.

According to the “Mobile Shopping Survey Series, Part 2: CPG Shopping Behavior,” the least brand conscious group consists of 25-34 year-old shoppers, with 82 percent willing to switch brands if they received a mobile offer for a competing product while in the store.

The survey also found that 81 percent of smartphone owners go to grocery and drug stores prepared with a list of items to buy. Of this group, only 8 percent list specific brands to purchase. This indicates that a large majority of shoppers are making brand decisions while they are in the store aisle, providing a unique opportunity for brands and retailers to influence pre-purchasing decisions via a customer’s smartphone.

Other key findings from the survey include:

Ninety percent of 25-34 year-old smartphone owners expressed interest in receiving instant offers for the things they were already shopping for through a grocery or drug store-based mobile shopping app

When they are in a grocery or drug store aisle, smartphone owners’ purchasing decisions are based on:

• Price/everyday low value (76 percent)
• Promotions/getting the most for their money (58 percent)
• Coupon availability (51 percent)
• Brand loyalty (38 percent)
• Generic or store brand availability (26 percent)
• New products from existing or emerging brands (22 percent)

“For years, brands have relied on traditional in-store shopper marketing tactics such as endcap displays, dump bins and sampling programs to influence the purchase decisions that are being made in the store aisle,” said Andrew Paradise, AisleBuyer’s CEO. “But today’s shopper has become increasingly tech savvy, and brands need to adapt their age-old strategies to remain competitive in our new online world. Given that a majority of shoppers enter stores with only rough shopping lists, they are incredibly impressionable when they are in the aisle. As brand marketers look for new ways to feature their products when shoppers are considering the competition, they should look no further than something consumers already have in hand – their smartphones.”

The Mobile Shopping Survey Series is a national survey designed to provide insight into the in-store shopping behavior of smartphone owners. The three-part survey was conducted in February 2012 via Zoomerang, an online survey services provider, and is based on 1027 respondents. The survey is sponsored by in-store mobile commerce provider AisleBuyer.

AisleBuyer offers a mobile commerce platform for retailers, brands and quick service restaurants, with mobile self-checkout capabilities for improving the in-store shopping experience, conversion rates and average cart size by delivering targeted product recommendations, promotions and coupons to smartphone users while they shop. AisleBuyer includes analytics for collecting detailed data on in-store shopping behavior that was previously unattainable to retailers.