Who are today’s shoppers?

The shopper is a person in his own right, with his desires, his needs, his preferences, his habits, his logic and his contradictions… Today’s shopper has become very demanding… He wants everything, but above all he wants the best! Shoppers are not against making purchases in shops, but they want to take advantage of good deals, discounts and everything that e-commerce has to offer. However, it’s important to remember that the buyer is not always the consumer.

The intelligence of shopper marketing

Shopper marketing encompasses all the marketing stimuli designed to influence or trigger a purchase. To do this, it is essential to understand the expectations and attitudes of today’s shoppers, and also to decipher their choices. Shopper marketing needs to answer all the questions that consumers ask. This is why many companies have merged their marketing and sales departments. Together, they want to move faster and share everything they’ve learned about the new shopper.
These days, the shopper is at the centre of everything – he’s the one who buys. You have to know how to seduce them and talk to them at the right time. Of course, the proliferation of channels, especially computerised ones, makes this trickier. The biggest effort to be made is to merge the media. Gradually erasing the line that separates the real world from the virtual world… Becoming one.

The challenge of shopper marketing

In recent years, we have witnessed a shift in power. Power has shifted from manufacturers to retailers. Today, that power lies with the shopper. This changes the game radically. Retailers and brands have never before worked together to satisfy their buyers. For companies, this means a radical change of mindset. They urgently need to change the way they operate. What’s more, digital technologies are making inroads into the world of shopper marketing, and no-one can ignore them. Today, companies need to move towards conversational commerce, with the aim of attracting as many shoppers as possible, whatever their brand.

Shopper insights

As Michaël Bendavid, Managing Director of Strategic Research, explains, “Reviving innovation means listening more closely to consumers, to the problems they encounter in using existing products or services, and to the expectations they express…”. The aim is not only to analyse the behaviour of customers as they make their purchasing decisions, but also to analyse their personality. In psychology, insight is defined as “the sudden discovery of the solution to a problem without going through a series of trials and errors”. That’s why insight must be coherent, based on a fundamental truth and mobilising a need or desire. Qualitative studies and trend studies now agree on analysing the motivations, expectations and experiences of shoppers with regard to a product. Insight will thus enable companies to steer their marketing policy in a more realistic direction.

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