Primal Shopper: Unlocking Shopper DNA to Power Your Marketing

There is no doubt COVID has impacted our shopping. There are different factors affecting the way we shop from businesses being closed to lockdowns to self-quarantine due to health risks. Regardless of the reason, many shoppers are forced to try different channels and retailers to get what they need.

For some it may feel like a shopping renaissance because they found new ways to shop, for others it may feel like the dark ages because they are forced to shop outside of their preferred state.

Within grocery there has been a surge in Buy Online Pickup In Store (BOPIS) and delivery. Industry experts point to this surge as the future of retail and brands need to adopt or die.

I don’t think it is that simple.

In this podcast, I review at how COVID has impacted each Primal Shopper typology and whether the new shopping behaviors will persist past COVID or if shoppers will revert to their previous behaviors.

Gen Z’s is barraged with 10,000 pieces of information every day. The deluge of information causes a Poverty of Attention and they have little patience for irrelevant information. In their world, information and ads are one second away getting swiped. This is the scrollable economy. Everyone has the control of their information feed and they can swipe it, skip it, or ignore it. The challenge for markers is how do you stop the swipe.

In this podcast, I reveal research on what makes Gen Z’s mind work and why you should care. I will discuss how academics have been dealing with this Poverty of Attention for years, and what they recommend doing. Finally, I will talk about several solutions to stop the swipe of the Gen Z’er.

We are in the midst of the holiday shopping season. To celebrate the holiday shopping season, I thought I would do a reprise of last year’s holiday episode (Fight, Flight or Buy. The impact of the Holiday Retail Season on your Shopper DNA) mashed up with several questions I found interesting for the 2019 shopping season.

The questions come from several news articles and the holiday marketing barrage. My curiosity was piqued by several articles and made me wonder if it was hype or real. So, for this episode, I combined the holiday mindsets in my book with a few headlines and had some fun with it. To this end I discuss the following questions:

• Are we at a cyber-tipping point for online holiday shopping? It seems like online shopping is dominating the marketing buzz, but is this hype or reality? I look at the current level of online shopping and project how quickly I believe online shopping will grow and why.
• Are holiday deals, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday just becoming seasonal white noise? This is an interesting shopper-centric topic. We are inundated with massive amounts of ads promising savings on our holiday shopping. However, if everyone is promising a deal, how effective is the marketing during the holiday season. Also, what is the impact if you do not offer a deal.
• So, is the shortened holiday shopping season affecting the timing of how we shop?Okay, the holiday shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas is six days shorter this year. You find articles in the press predicting shop-ageddon because of the reduced time. I discuss the impact (or not) of the shortened time period and which mindsets are affected.

I hope you enjoy the episode. Happy Holidays everyone!

Amazon versus Walmart. They seem to always be in the news. Recently, Walmart announces an unlimited grocery delivery offer for an annual fee. Amazon waves their delivery fee, and now it is free for Prime Members. Walmart announces they will deliver not only to home, but also the final fifteen feet to your fridge. Amazon offers 2-hour delivery for Whole Foods. It goes on and on. The two retail behemoths keep trading body blows to achieve the ultimate goal: converting the other’s shoppers.

But how many shoppers are willing switch?

The answer to this question lies within shopper motivations. Based on Amazon and Walmart’s retail offering, they are attracting different types of shoppers. And honestly, it will be difficult to switch some shoppers regardless of a new offering.

In my latest podcast, I take an in-depth look into this billion-dollar throwdown and the Primal Shopper motivations impacting the two retailers.  An interesting aspect to this retail battle is that it is taking place on multiple fronts: grocery, holiday shopping, electronics, clothing. In this episode, I explore the grocery battle and look at three types of shoppers: Mission Shoppers, Deal Seekers, and Brand Citizen/Journey Shoppers.

It’s that time of year as many marketers set budgets for 2020. While there are different ways to set your marketing budget, I want to offer up a bit of a twist. Sort of a provocative approach based on three factors: primal habit, marketing investment, and target contribution to revenue.

I begin the podcast by talking about a concept called Reverse ROI. Fundamentally, this concept is based on a simple question:

If you were to spend zero marketing dollars in 2020, how much revenue would you accrue?

The answer to this question is your primal habit line. It is the estimate of how many people buy on habit (or loyalty), therefore marketing does not affect their decision. Clients have different habit lines based on their customers frequency if purchase, and habitual nature. For example, in grocery the line can be 80 to 90 percent, in travel about 50 percent, and low-frequency durable goods can be below 20 percent. In this podcast, I discuss how your marketing dollars are an investment designed to reach your revenue goals by making up the difference between the habit line and goal. It’s an interesting premise worth a listen … but it doesn’t end there.

To achieve the revenue goal, I go a little retro by using Pink Floyd’s the Dark Side of the Moon, or to be more specific visual on the album cover. For those who aren’t familiar with the album cover it is a visual of a prism. This metaphorically represents how most clients must break down their budget to understand how each target contributes to their revenue goal. Think of it this way: the light beaming into the prism represents the gap between the habit line and revenue goal. The different colorful light beams emanating from the prism represents the different targets you need to appeal to in order to meet your goal. In the podcast I detail this approach and use a travel example to bring it to light.

Worth noting is this is an example on how to use a Primal Shopper survey. The survey not only isolates opportunity targets based on different motivation, but it also identifies media and information sources influencing each target’s purchase decisions.

In America many people are math challenged. Math doesn’t come easy, and complicated math is even more challenging. When I say complicated math, I am not talking algebra or calculus, rather I am referring to applying percents and fractions. This is the theory of innumeracy. Innumeracy is to numbers as illiteracy is to reading. And while many people struggle with numbers, ironically many marketers’ pricing strategy includes applying percents to calculate the deal. Innumeracy is the topic for this podcast and how it impacts promotional pricing.

In this podcast I break down five mistakes marketers are making in regard to innumeracy. The irony is marketers think big numbers lead to big results. Seems logical, except if people can’t calculate the deal they are not likely to act on it.  I will discuss five common mistakes and then offer up four pricing solutions that counter innumeracy in America. The solutions focus on simplifying the math, making it obvious, making it easy to buy, and finally making it highly relevant. The solutions are not overly complicated, rather they are simple strategies to keep the math easy and increase the effectiveness of your marketing.

Most people have a desire to be green. A desire to recycle. A desire to reduce their carbon footprint. A desire to make the world a better place for future generations. However, most people’s desires fail to manifest itself in consistent behaviors. Especially when it comes to eco-shopping, our continual purchasing of plastic bottles is puzzling considering the global impact they are having on the ecology.

In this podcast I investigate why shoppers have or lack an eco-conscious when shopping. The irony is they want companies or brands to be green and have sustainable strategies, yet most shoppers fail on their part to make the right eco-choices. It is well documented on why people recycle (or don’t), but I am more interested in going beyond that and probe the question of:

Why do people make the eco-decisions that they do (or don’t) in the store?

The answer to this question is based on our innate desire as it relates to truly being green. I walk through five desires or eco-mindsets as an explanation for how we shop green. I conclude the podcast by discussing what are the ways to truly change our eco-behaviors. 

For show notes and a list of eco-mindsets go to PrimalShopper.com.

  Branding is at the core of breaking through the white noise of today’s media environment and moving shoppers to buy. Modern brand positioning first came into vogue in the 1970’s and has hardly changed in the 40-plus years since then. While the approach to branding hasn’t changed, the media landscape has exploded with ever expanding channel options, more robust targeting, and all leading to the tsunami of ads the pummel consumers daily. So, is the 1970’s approach still effective today or do we need to rethink how we emotionally connect brands with people? 

This evolution and effectiveness of branding is the topic of my latest podcast. I reflect on the media environment at the dawn of brand positioning in the 1970's and look at how branding launched some campaigns still running today. As I fast forward to today, I find the classic branding approach works for some products but fails with many complex brands that have multiple customer desires. Instead of creating emotional connections, these brands’ ads tend to be product-centric as oppose to desire-centric (failing to make an emotional connection). I will discuss some concerns I have with how agencies approach branding and conclude the podcast with my perspective on branding for today’s media environment.

 In this episode, I have some fun talking about the traditional marketing funnel and how it relates to dating. Over my career I used the dating analogy many times to describe what is happening within marketing (and how you shouldn’t date shoppers like you’re a desperate brand). To illustrate this concept, I talk about different funnels in four product categories: automotive, mobile phone, grocery, and restaurants; and possible solutions to move shoppers through the funnel. 

 Every year many people make a New Year’s resolution.  Most people are unable to keep their resolution. Why do we fail? Well, we fail to understand the core motivation fueling the habit. This fact is also true for shoppers. Many marketers fail to alter a shopper’s habits, because the are unable to pinpoint their core desire.

This podcast is about changing your shopper’s stripes through marketing. I will cover three topics in the podcast:

• What is the true cost to change our stripes? I will discuss New Year’s Resolutions and the primary reason many of us fail to keep them.
• It’s not about a resolution, it’s about creating a habit. The key to keeping a resolution is about creating a new habit. I will talk about habit creation based on insights from Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit.
• Can you change a shopper’s stripes with your marketing? I dedicated most of the podcast to discuss the ability to change a Shopper’s DNA. To move a shopper from their preferred DNA to a different DNA profile that is advantageous to the marketer. I will illustrate how to shift the DNA through examples in discount retail, grocery, and hotel.

Show Links:

Top resolutions for New Year’s by YouGov

The cost for New Year’s Resolutions from CheatSheet.com

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Changing the Shopper's Stripes for Hotels

In this podcast, I discuss how to move a vacation planner from Free Agent to Brand Citizen and then from Deal Seeker to Price Blind.  The hotel/resort can significantly reduce the impact of Online Travel Agents (e.g. Expedia, Hotels.com, Trivago) within the vacation planner's journey by changing the shopper's stripes.