Benchmark Study Probes for Behavioral Changes over a Three Year Span
Overview
For the third straight year, Catapult teamed up with global research and consulting firm IPSOS-OTX to conduct an online study of 1,210 consumers who define themselves as the primary shoppers in the grocery, mass, drug, club and dollar channels. The study was fielded in June-July 2011 and the survey data is unweighted.
To better understand consumer practices and behaviors across 34 different digital shopper marketing (DSM) tools, encompassing multiple retailers and categories, and assemble valuable historical trending data generated over the three-year arc of the study.
The survey was designed to assess the helpfulness of these DSM tools for shoppers, their frequency of use, level of intent to use in the future, and the impact that these technologies may have in shaping the brand and retail choices of shoppers.
This year’s annual study, the third in a series, provides the most current assessment of the overall state of DSM, building on a foundation established by the inaugural DSM study in 2009 and last year’s study.
“The rapid growth of DSM tools has forced brands and retailers to shift their focus and budgets along the path-to-purchase, away from above the line spending,” says Brian Cohen, Director of Digital Shopper Marketing at Catapult. “But while technology has changed shopper behaviors, it has yet to catch up with the wide array of shopper need states.”
A Roadmap for Digital Shopper MarketingTM Investment
In addition to looking at how various technologies address Value, Information for Decision-making and Convenience, we examined the adoption of technologies at important stages of development to give retailers and brands early clues about which technologies to support. The following summarizes our framework:
Proven Winners
• Spend with expectation of good ROI and business impact; optimize to improve
ROI/impact
Emerging Favorites
• Test, Learn, and Scale where successful
Early Bets
• PR Opportunity, could be powerful if retailer provides merchandising to support
the innovation
Targeted/Niche
• Spend judiciously, and only against target, with a meaningful/relevant solution
to the target
Fix or Repurpose
• Spend only if new rationale for using the tool has been created and
communicated to the shopper