Success
does leave clues and every now and then the team at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® likes to hear from
other on what they see coming down the road within the Grocerant niche that’s filled
with Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food. This week our team like the term Vocal
Aficionados. Here is what we learned:
In a new study titled
on The future of retail, from Daymon Worldwide, we learned that shoppers
evolving into advocates, helping brands determine ways to meet their new
demands.
The study,
"From Shopper to Advocate: The Power of Participation,"
presents six key shopper insights that will shape the future of retail. The
insights have to do with looking beyond demographics, allowing for co-creation,
catering to new ideas about “freshness,” understanding the value of private
brands, interacting with engaged shoppers, and integrating mobile strategies.
It’s Not Just
Generational
Customers are breaking
the bounds of their demographics. It’s now more about values, attitudes and
lifestyles than age, gender and income. Daymon breaks customers into three
categories: Vocal Aficionados, Balanced Enthusiasts and Struggling Apathetics.
Vocal Aficionados, with their zest for shopping and overall awareness, are the
most valuable to retailers. Not only are they most likely to buy products
themselves, but they also make for good brand ambassadors and marketers. Among
other attributes ascribed to Vocal Aficionados are creative, passionate,
wellness-oriented, socially minded, and digitally savvy. Comparatively,
Balanced Enthusiasts, while engaged, are more pragmatic when it comes to
shopping and slightly less digitally proficient. Struggling Apathetics, the
least engaged of the three, are often more concerned with price due to
financial constraints and other circumstances; despite this, the group is
overall aware of trends.
Co-Creation Is the
Future
Under the
shopper-turned-advocate trend, co-creation provides a significant opportunity
for growth. Shoppers, especially Vocal Aficionados, want to provide feedback to
companies and assistance to brands in designing new products or services. Of
those considered Vocal Aficionados, 55 percent are interested in giving company
feedback, vs. 45 percent of Balanced Enthusiasts. And 51 percent of Vocal
Aficionados are interested in helping a company design a new product or
service, vs. 42 percent of Balanced Enthusiasts.
Fresh as the Gateway
to Loyalty
Six out of 10
shoppers cite "fresh" categories as being important factors in their
store choice. For engaged shoppers like Vocal Aficionados, "fresh"
categories extend beyond produce, meat and seafood and into factors that fall
within the “Participation Halo.” Fifty-three percent value in-store restaurants
more than the average shopper; 33 percent more want a wide variety of natural
and organic products; 31 percent expect more fresh prepared foods; 24 percent
want more sustainably produced or sourced products; and 22 percent seek a more
broad selection of local products.
A New Dimension of
Private Brands
The most engaged
shoppers are committed to, among other things, learning more about private
brands and the features they might provide. Vocal Aficionados, compared to
average shoppers, are 41 percent more likely to perceive that private brands
have attractive packaging, 37 percent more likely to find them trendy, and 36
percent more likely to believe that they offer unique flavors they can’t get
elsewhere. Other factors include whether the brands understand local needs,
provide higher quality, offer the variety of products one cares about, meets
one's needs, and fits one’s lifestyle.
Conversational
Engagement
Daymon’s research
indicates that shoppers’ relationships with brands now extend beyond the
transactional and outside of the store — be it brick-and-mortar or online.
To meet new expectations, brands have to use technology as a means to connect.
Facebook, blogs, live online chats, Twitter, mobile apps and text messaging are
all ways in which shoppers can provide feedback to brands. Vocal Aficionados
are 58 percent more likely than the average shopper to want to provide feedback
via Facebook, according to the study, and 44 percent more likely to want to provide
feedback through Twitter. While it’s great to provide a platform for consumers
to provide feedback, it’s also important to respond to feedback, making
communication between shopper and brand a two-way street.
Seamless Integration
With Mobile
While being digital
savvy is great for communication with shoppers, it’s perhaps even more valuable
when it comes to actual sales, which is why mobile integration is key. In fact,
according to Daymon’s study, the digital experience an engaged shopper has with
a retailer more often than not determines where they decide to spend their
money. A stunning 83 percent of Vocal Aficionados are more likely than the
average shopper to use their mobile phones during a shopping trip to help them
make a purchase. And 90 percent are more likely to prefer stores that have apps
for shopping that enable payment. Click-and-collect programs are 48 percent
more popular with Vocal Aficionados, too.
“With legacy
categories declining, digital strategies emerging and shoppers’ demand for engagement
and customization increasing, retailers and brands must better understand the
emerging needs and behaviors of shoppers on a global scale and dramatically
rethink their go-to-market strategies,” said Dave Harvey, vice president of
thought leadership at Daymon. “As shopping becomes more on-demand and
increasingly personalized each day, we find ourselves amid a seismic shift that
promises to reshape retail as we know it.”
So, what’s next
according to Damon? Retailers can meet new customer expectations with the five
following strategies:
1. Offer
opportunities for collaboration and co-creation.
2. Allow for hyper-personalization of products and services.
3. Incorporate multi-sensory experiences, from discovery to digital.
4. Accent new interpretations of “fresh.”
5. Simplify the experience of shopping with an eye toward making it
effortless.
Regular readers of this blog know that the team at Foodservice Solutions® has over the past six months edified each of these findings in one way
or another helping retailer find was to create complexity free meals, dinners,
and food discovery. For more clues to
retail success follow us on Facebook.com/Steven Johnson,
Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/ or twitter.com/grocerant. Email:
steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us
