Shopper Insights: Uncovering the “Why” Behind “What” Your Customers Buy

As a consumer product brand, you know that understanding your customers is key to driving sales and building brand loyalty. While tracking sales data can give you some insight into what your customers are buying, it doesn’t tell you why they’re making those purchases. That’s where shopper insights come in. Shopper insights provide a deep understanding of the motivations and decision-making process of your customers. By uncovering the “why” behind their purchases, you can better tailor your products, messaging, and marketing efforts to meet their needs and preferences.

Engaging Shoppers

There are several ways in engaging shoppers to understand their behaviour. However, in order to understand the true “why” of their behaviour, you need a multi-faceted approach. An approach that delves into the minds of your shoppers, uncovering their everyday choices, driven by their unique circumstances. Such an approach needs the following ingredients:

Understanding your shopper mindset: Capture what drives your shoppers. What are their personal motivations and life situations. How do they choose products or services that help simplify their lives. What trends emerge from their unmet needs. Understanding the mindset of your shopper needs to be a continuous process. You need to continuously assess how the market changes and what is the impact of those changes on your shopper’s own behaviour.

Witnessing your shopper experience: Your shoppers may or may not be your consumers, however the product or service you designed for your consumers may be filtered through the eyes of your shoppers. Walk in their shoes as they embark on their shopping journey. Understand what catches their attention in the store. What information do they seek, how do they choose a product / service. How central is the product / brand presence in the store? In essence, do they choose you and if they do or they don’t then, why?

Going beyond the numbers: What are the shoppers saying and observing? How do you capture the visual cues that trigger purchase choice? How do they describe their own experience?

Crowst Shopper Insights Method

A well rounded approach combines elements of both quantitative and qualitative assessment to draw critical and impactful shopper insights. Insights that will allow you to take actions that satisfy your shoppers’ desires and thus boost sales of your own products / services in stores.

The Crowst shopper insights service adopts one such methodology for conducting high-quality shopper insights studies. This approach helps you discover who your customers are, what their purchase triggers are, the impact of in-store retail elements such as marketing promotions, the influence of external trends, and even unmet needs, or white spaces in the store.

Crowst Shopper Insights Service

The Crowst method is a three-step process that involves understanding who your customers are, identifying their in-store experiences and triggers, and gathering qualitative data to go deeper into their shopping experience and mindset.

Step 1: Understanding your shopper

Demographic data such as age, gender, income, and location can give you a basic understanding of your customers. However, the Crowst method takes this a step further by using a combination of survey and observational data to create a more detailed customer profile. This includes information such as their shopping habits, motivations, preferences, and behaviors, allowing you to segment them into meaningful groups.

Step 2: Identifying In-Store Experiences and Triggers

In-store observations and interviews with customers can provide valuable insights into their shopping experience. The Crowst method uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to identify the key triggers that influence customer behavior, such as product placement, pricing, promotions. Furthermore you can qualify this data by consumer’s own preferences that shape their in-store purchase considerations (especially in highly competitive categories). By understanding these triggers, you can make informed decisions about how to optimize your in-store marketing and retail execution efforts to drive sales.

Step 3: Gathering Qualitative Data

To go even deeper into your customers’ experiences and mindset, the Crowst method incorporates qualitative data such as in-store photos and open feedback. This helps you understand the emotional and psychological drivers behind customer behavior, visual cues that can convert a shopper, and reveal unmet needs or opportunities for innovation. By using this data, you can make data-driven decisions that improve your product offerings and increase customer engagement.

So what sets the Crowst method apart? The answer lies in the depth and granular understanding it provides while engaging with a shopper. While sales data and customer surveys can give you an understanding of your customers and what they are buying today, they often miss the nuances and subtleties of shopper behavior that could shape their purchase today as well as the future. The Crowst method, provides a 360-degree view of the customer experience, allowing you to make informed business decisions that drive sales and build brand loyalty.

Dont’t take our word for it. Read what our customers have to say.

Shopper insights are critical to understanding your customers and building long-lasting brand loyalty. By leveraging the Crowst method, you can go beyond traditional sales data and customer surveys, you can unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation in today’s competitive marketplace.

Contact Us to learn more about how we can help you get into the minds of your shoppers.