Shopper Marketing: The New Frontier

While I was never one for 8 am lectures in college, I am so glad that I took the opportunity to sit in on the Shopper Marketing keynote presentation while at GlobalShop last week. Starting at 8:30 am, coffees in hand, the audience was thrown 90 minutes of compelling research and remarks surrounding this relatively new concept of "shopper marketing" (i.e., in-store marketing, marketing at-retail, and so on). Below are some interesting tidbits pertaining to store design and layout that stuck with this attendee: (I work for a fixture manufacturer. What else can I say?)

• Different parts of the store have different potential to reach customers. A Nielsen study that compared 4th Quarter 2007 to 4th Quarter 2008 showed that while stopper audience numbers remained flat, their locations within the store had shifted. Many people who have previously shopped in the premium aisles (generally located around a store's perimeter) were moving to the center of the store and the more affordable options.
• If you're targeting women, avoid long, high aisles.
• Men and women engage different parts of their brains when shopping. Your store layout might work for one sex but not the other. Men like to buy and they take note of spatial dimensions. They are looking at how to get in and how to get out. Women, on the other hand, enjoy searching and looking for individual items. Different-sized aisles and color markers serve the female crowd well.

Not related to store design or layout but still pretty interesting: shopping trips, on average, are becoming shorter and more frequent. Also, shoppers are relying on grocery lists less and less. Instead, they will follow a path through a store that takes them past the items that most closely match what they have in their pantries at home.

It's almost scary what research can uncover regarding our shopping habits, but it's this info that will help retailers better serve their clientele. If it means a more enjoyable shopping experience for me, then I'm all for it. What about you?