Understand your shopper: A journey to win in-store (Part I)

Hi FMCGers,

I'd like to start by sharing my happiness of the great support & interest the blog is getting, I wasn't expecting to get more than 1,000 views in less than a month specially that we only have been discussing a focused part of the FMCG world (Trade Marketing), it is also shows how important Trade Marketing and Shopper Marketing is getting to all FMCGers year on year,  actually I have received a couple of emails and calls asking about how to implement the concept correctly within the the companies' structure, and some asked on what are the Arabic translation of this concept ( I will soon post a blog in Arabic to address these request). Again thanks all :) :)

After we shared the pillars of trade marketing & shopper marketing; meaning (Link) , classification (Link) and importance (Link), we need to start discussing how to win the shoppers' hearts, trust and purchases decisions.

There was a time where FMCGers only cared about understanding consumers habits and how to direct them to love their brands, these days are long gone, also nowadays the retailers are bigger in size and power, 100's of brands are available in the store and the competition is getting severe. 
Every brand want to stand out for the shoppers and starting to spend more time and efforts to understand shoppers behaviours and how to win in-store by addressing their shopper needs, but who are these shoppers ? we will start by classifying the different types of shoppers.

Shoppers types:

1. Loyal Shoppers
2. Bargain seekers
3. Impulse shoppers
4. Need-base shopper
5. Browsing shopper

Going into the details of each type we will find the following:   

Loyal Customers: FMCGers favourite type, 

• This shopper will go for the brand no matter what, for them the rest of the shelf is just a black box they don't care about it, it is the highest level of brands equities.
• This type makes 20% of the brands' shoppers however the make 50% of the sales which is without a doubt an excellent figure
• The sad news this type is shrinking with the time due to cost of living getting higher and higher, and they start considering other options.  
• This type is high in the cosmetics products, medium in food & beverages and low in home care products.
• This type preferred to be recognised by the brands by getting special gifts (promo packs)
• The key winning strategy to keep this shoppers is to make the brand easy to find and visible in style. 

Bargain seekers: A volume generator but a continuos risk

• This type have higher care for the price and managing their grocery budget carefully.  
• they may keep the brand equity in mind but they will always look for the best value deal. 
• In Saudi Arabia this type is getting bigger & bigger, go to any retailer in Saudi Arabia and see the number of people browsing around carrying thy customer weekly leaflet looking for the best deal, also, look at the crazy offer some retailers put to attract these types of shoppers, some retailer they may go to the extreme of losing in some key products to attract shoppers to their outlets and making up for that lost from other products. 
• The key winning strategy is to keep promoting your high volume products with good offer that will keep the cash flow running and avoid high share loss to other competitive brands

We will park for now and continue the topic in the next blog to go through the other 3 types and also we will support that by another blog discussing how to know which type your categories shopper follow.

 Meanwhile I'd really appreciate your feedback and comments to make the discussion and next blog stronger and more beneficial, take care for now.

>>>>>> Link to part II <<<<<<<

Hasan Bashammakh

Follow @HasanBash