Understanding retail shopper behaviour during final stages of purchase process
The research challenge
Given consumers increasingly globalised lives, how should mobile phone retail stores adapt to improve the customer experience and how does this impact on store layout to boost sales.
What we did
Quantitative research was used to provide robust data, in the form of exit interviews with shoppers intending to buy. Qualitative research was used to provide deep insight; this included observation of shoppers in stores, semiotic analysis of store environment and POS, mini-discussions with selected shoppers and face-to-face depth interviews with store managers
What we found
Retail stores offer significant room for impact and many shoppers entering stores with an intention to buy can still be influenced, even during final stages of the purchase process. Consistent patterns of the in-store journey were observed, which led to recommendations about how to design the store around key customer moments, as this would maximise impact. Importantly, we found that the priority of critical moments differed by market and the risk of failing to deliver on these critical moments caused the customer journey to break down. Our analysis identified a number of prominent shopper typologies illustrating how different shoppers engage with stores. We demonstrated how it was possible to re-design a retail store to accommodate all shopper types, encouraging both browser engagement and buyer sales transactions.
Outcome
By working in partnership with a number of retail outlets the client was able to tailor the retail store environments of a national chain in line with customer needs. This collaboration was mutually beneficial to all parties as boosted sales volumes were observed shortly after.
More Information
Richard Morland
Business Development Director
+44 (0) 20 7890 9811
richard.morland@gfk.com