New co-operation between H/T/P and pospulse

It’s widely known that a very high percentage of purchase decisions are made at the POS – estimates hover around 80%.

What exactly is going on when that decision doesn’t go in your brand’s favour? When consumers walk on by?

When a less powerful product in your portfolio gets “overlooked” – again and again, so that you have to defend it to your Retail partner who is looking for profitability on the shelf-space?

Or when an important new launch is selling slowly, with much hope resting on quick success figures.

Delivering fast and powerfully diagnostic data for this type of challenge requires a new joined-up type of data-diagnostics, linking “what happens on the shelf” to “what goes on in consumers’ minds”.

The new co-operation between POS analytics specialist POSpulse* and leading qualitative brand and research consultancy Happy Thinking People delivers on this, aiming to fuse real-time POS analytic data with in-depth People Understanding.

A typical project would encompass 2 – 4 of the following modules.

Module 1: Find out what’s going on at the POS
Put some numbers on it, fast. POSpulse crowd-sourced approach allows a quick, robust check on what’s going on – pricing, shelf placement, quick top-of-mind reactions, understanding of key messages, perceived attractiveness.

Within the space of a few days it’s possible to a fast picture of the “what, where, when……”

Module 2: Back to the POS….what’s going on in Consumer and Shopper minds?
A pragmatic qual. approach encompasses shop-alongs, intercepts, sales staff expert interviews, mobile ethnographies – to probe further into what’s going on in shoppers’ minds during the in-store visit, what sort of “journey” is experienced, from the moment before they enter the store to the moment they leave it….As our recent Esomar paper demonstrated, there are plenty of moments where the “journey” takes an unpredicted direction.

Qualitative data is accessed to enrich the crowd-sourced shelf-understanding.

Module 3: Collaborative Client Workshop
A full day facilitated download session involving sales and marketing, merchandisers, sales staff; to generate hypotheses on a future path forward for overall messaging, touchpoint strategy, promotional focus, shelf-space utilisation, pricing…..Scribblers accompany so that ideas are visualised fast, and embryonic consumer decision journeys mapped out.

Module 4: Panorama Groups®:
Hot house sessions with different target groups: heavy category users versus lighter users, brand versus competitor…..with the aim of refining winning messages, getting tonality right, building an ideal positioning for the product in question that maximises its relevance to the different groups.

In most cases, Shelf Life delivers sufficient insight nuggets to enable focussed corrective marketing action within the space of
3 weeks.

• It combines the robustness of quantitative data with the ability to explore with qualitative – as well as delivering a concrete, actionable output:Understanding the “why” behind sales figures

• Full transparency on what to improve on

• Real shopper perspective – in real-time

Interested? We’d love to hear from you.