The Future of Retail by Herb Sorensen

If you missed Herb Sorensen's presentation on on Retailing: The Return to Personal Selling, you should check out his book. No one doubted his passion for the subject as he walked us through the "history of retail" before giving us his take on the "future of retail." "The need for efficiencies" he claims, is the reason the retailer/consumer relationship has evolved to where it is today. "It has always been about efficiencies and where we are today is simply because of this."

The following quote summarized his point: "One hundred years ago retailers ran their stores by watching their customers closely. Somewhere during the last hundred years, spread sheets, slotting allowances, and quarterly performance replaced the basic principles of the business." Norm Myhr, Group Vice President Sales and Promotion and Marketing, Fred Meyer.

He mentioned P&G's early "Soap Opera Ad" and Sears "Wish Book Catalogs" as examples of how we began getting consumer's attention outside of the store when it became difficult to do so inside the store.

And now, "everyone is realizing the system of communicating to consumers 'outside of the store' is not working due to the fragmentation we have" {due to MTV, Facebook, etc.}

Statistics he cited include:

In 95, 3 commercials reached 80% of women 18-49

In 2000, it took 92 commercials to do the job

He concluded with how he sees the future of retail, titled: the "Amazonification" of Retail. "Because Amazon gets it, that the selling is always about the closing... Amazon understood that they had to 'close the sale fast.'" And now, "the real battle in retailing is between Wal-Mart and Amazon." So, how will we get personal selling back in the store? By "pulling the internet into the store," he claims.

Also, other tips he gave for "closing the sale" in the store included:

1.  Provide only a few "Top Seller" tags in the aisle
2. Brand call out tags on packaging: "Shoppers #1 Choice"
3. To make it clear, you can only do that with 1 or 2 items

I think I'll buy the book.

Learning What's Good at Goodyear

Kim White presented on how Goodyear used a variety of qualitative research techniques: immersions, peer focus groups, and learning connects to fully understand their consumer's retail experience.

The techniques, developed by MarketVision Research, were creative and insightful...and combined, they allowed the consumer voice to be loud and clear to their c-level management as well as their dealers.

One of the many creative qualitative exercises utilized "Grove" templates. I have also found these templates helpful in a number of different research projects. (You can go online and download the smaller deck of cards ... or you can order larger, wall-size templates for group facilitation exercises.)

The specific template used in Goodyear's research was an Idea Wheel that helped convey consumer's wishes and ideas around the buying experience.

Another very cool exercise included a "Retailer Personality creation" where participants had to "create" the personality of retailers with available supplies. This was an interesting way to gain insight on how retailers are perceived.

Taking this to CEO gave their upper management an understanding of how consumers view them as a retailer and thus, drove change throughout the organization.

April Bell

The Skinny on Facebook

Well, I am here for the first session kick-off at The Market Research Event in Las Vegas. What a great first session to blog about: Facebook. Meg Sloan, research lead at Facebook and Brant Cruz of Chadwick Martin Bailey shared a little glimpse of what life inside Facebook is like.

Currently, Facebook has 300 million users worldwide and at least 1/2 of their users go to the site daily! Wow! How do they do it? Here's a tidbit....

Their guiding principles include:

1. Proactive
2. Scalable
3. Expertise
4. New School
5. Synthesis & Story-telling

Meg also gave us insight into how they view their small marketing research team:

1. Try our best to act like the rest of the org
2. Radical focus on the roadmap and prioritization
3. Making sure we all are doing things we feel strong at each day (staying motivated)
4. Supporting each other/sharing information/work etc.
5. Be nimble and use our resources and relationships to their fullest
6. And last but not least: Ruthless Prioritization as well as Have Fun and create an awesome workplace. Their Q3 planning meeting involved pedicures--sign me up!

You can see more about life inside the marketing research team at Facebook. Check out this video about

"life at facebook." Oh, and by the way, they currently have a marketing research position open for anyone who is interested..I'm now a little more motivated to spend time on my facebook page

...

Live at TMRE in Vegas

Well, hello. Here I am, blogging again for IIR live at The Market Research Event 2009 in Las Vegas. We are at the Red Rock Resort and Casino and it is rockin'! Wow, what a great conference site--here's the view from my room!

It is cool to be back for the 2nd time. Last year was my first Market Research Event. This year, I recognize a few faces and have met a few of you throughout the year.

So, if you're reading this and you're here in Vegas for the event, please let me know if you have something valuable to add to the blog.

Hope to meet you.

Insight into Social Media Users

Step right up folks! It’s the social media bandwagon. I’m on it, you’re on it, and with the recent study from Anderson Analytics, marketers better be on it. At this point in the game, most marketers are, but this study reveals some interesting findings on what your preferred social network says about you.

Apparently, I’m all about the business or the benjamins, because I prefer LinkedIn over other social networking sites. I’m also more likely to own top of the line electronic gadgets, like HD televisions, blu ray players and digital cameras.

The study found 60% of Americans are social network users, but the study defined a user as someone who had uses a social network at least once a month. The average user collectively spends about an hour each day on social networking sites.

So what does your social networking site say about you? Or more importantly, what will this study tell marketers, specifically online marketers? Here are some findings that really jumped out at me:

• 52% of social networkers had friended or become a fan of at least one brand on Facebook. Getting individual endorsements on Facebook can be a HUGE marketing accomplishment, because when someone becomes a fan of a brand on Facebook, he or she is saying “Brand X is apart of who I am and I want everyone to know about it.” The brand has not only produced brand loyalty in said-user, but that brand is also reaping the benefits of word-of-mouth advertising. When asked their feelings on seeing a brand on a social network, 17% felt positive and 19% said negative.

• When asked if they want more communication from brands 20% said yes. I think this percentage would be higher if it’s the right kind of communication. If brands communicate the message their target consumers want to hear and in a way they want to hear it, then they will want to hear from the brand.

• Social media users are four times more vocal than non-users online, such as commenting on discussion boards, forums, blogs, etc., which means they would be more likely to be vocal about announcing on the World Wide Web their feelings, both positive and negative, about a brand experience.

• Out of the four user groups defined by the study, Anderson said social media mavens are the key group for marketers not only because of their high incomes and decision making power, but also their large social media footprints can make them excellent brand allies or evangelists.

• Users preferring Twitter are big into pop culture.. movies, music, TV and reading and their buying habits mirror that. They are more likely to buy movies, books, shoes and cosmetics online than other network users. So marketers, take the hint and get on Twitter.

• LinkedIn users have the highest income averaging at $89,000, and they are also more interested in high-tech gadgets, as well as the gym, yoga, spa treatments, golf and tennis. Hello luxury and travel brand marketers.

I’d love to hear others take on these findings listed in more detail on Advertising Age.

Interesting Learnings from the "Experience Generation"

Hello all, it's been several weeks since I've had a change to blog.  I wanted to post a follow up to an interesting workshop I had the pleasure to attend.  I met both Tamara Sachs, CEO and Robert Miner, President of SachsInsights at The Market Research Event in October. Their compelling qualitative research work is supplemented with high quality "video storytelling", and it's fascinating!

I was fortunate to sit in on their workshop and I am posting a small clip here of the workshop Robert Miner gave on "MilleniAdults--the experience generation."

Mr. Miner mentioned several key points that define this segment:

1) Belief in a Kaleidoscope of Options

2) Definition of Success Varies Across the Segment (financially secure, life experiences, making a difference)

3) Entry Level Debt

4) Online Social Networking

For more video footage of the ethnographic study conducted by SachsInsights, you can visit their website.

Good stuff!!

April

When Time is Short and Money is Tight

I attended another interesting workshop last week at The Market Research Event. Speakers, Tina Bronkhorst, Vice President Digitas and Jennifer Drolet, Vice President, iModerate gave a compelling story for the benefits of a hybrid research approach.

"Current consumer demands and expectations for 'real time' dialogue are changing the way we, as marketers, need to think about research", say Tina and Jen. Below is a bulleted summary of their reasoning:

• It’s harder to be heard : 20 years ago, just 3 exposures created awareness, now it takes 150
• Consumers have an amazing ability to multitask
• Consumers aren’t as overwhelmed by information as they used to be
• They trust their peers more than they trust marketers
• Real time dialogue is everywhere (myspace, facebook, blogger)
• They are coming together with common interests. One example of this is the Starbucks gossip site, which lets those who have a similar feeling toward the brand chat together.
• And there are a host of others: blog, microblog, online chat, RSS, widgets, social networks, social bookmarks, message boards, podcasts, video sharing sites, photo sharing sites, virtual worlds, wikis...and the list will be greater as we move forward.
• So, marketing doesn’t own the brand completely anymore
• And, consumers trust their ability to make smart choices and they aren’t afraid to trust their instincts (Yankelovich Monitor 2004/2005)
• Instead, they prefer to take a chance with a personal experience, instead of playing it safe
• Thus, we need to focus on listening more instead of shouting louder (active branding)
• Stop push marketing and start pull marketing

They gave practical examples of how to develop hybrid approaches, where qual and quant data are collected at the same time. These include conducting:

• Online survey with IM-like chat intercept (iModerate)
• Online focus group with closed ended, open ended, IM-like chat and redirects (invoke)
• Online communities (communispace, passenger)

April Bell

TMRE 2008--What Participants Thought

As I've continued to receive feedback on last week's conference, I thought it would be appropriate to share a quick interview I conducted with one of the delegates. Jason Archambault, Director of Insights at Red Lobster and I had a chance to chat during the conference and he is one of many who have been attending the conference for several years. His comments reflected what I heard from several others.


April Bell

New Restaurant Concept

I was able to attend several incredible workshops last Wednesday at The Market Research Event and will be posting about those over the next few days.

One workshop, “Finding Billion Dollar New Opportunities” was presented by Roger Thompson, Senior Vice President of Darden Restaurants. He took us through his story of how they developed their restaurant concept, Seasons 52.

The majority of the presentation focused on Darden’s strategy of finding a new opportunity. With over 90,000 brands in the restaurant business, he mentioned it was one of their greatest challenges to find something that had not been done before. "What that means," he said, "is that you have to look around the corners. This gives you better peripheral vision, which helps you anticipate and lead to new opportunities.” Roger shared one approach they found to help them shift their perspective at Darden. By focusing on the “high potential arenas,” they began to determine where the possibilities lay. You can see by the slide below that mapping their brands against consumer needs created one area to pop, “Fresh and Healthy.”

Darden Restaurants (which used to be a part of the General Mills group until 1995) has a 8% share of the “Casual Dining” business. Some of these concepts include Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Long Horn Steakhouse and Bahama Breeze. And through their recent acquisition, The Capital Grille, they recently entered the “Fine Dining” business.

After developing 3 food positionings, then 9 healthful restaurant concepts, a new concept was developed, Seasons 52. I can’t wait until they open one in Dallas!

After the Fact

I made it back home to Texas late last night and have had a chance to ponder a bit about my first Market Research Event conference. In a nutshell, it was cool! I definitely enjoyed helping the IIR staff blog. It was similar to an ethnography project about market researchers, and as a moderator/qualitative consultant, that's my favorite thing to do!

I came to the conference wanting to learn more about the industry, including the wants, needs, desires, and frustrations of those in market research.

And I left the conference with a lot of learnings.

So, for the next several days I will be posting snippets of my what I learned (including photos and videos) onto this site as well as my own

blog.

And I hope you’ll join me in an online discussion— feel free to respond, ask questions, post comments. I think we NEED to start an online dialogue and continue to stay connected virtually. And this is the reason: One of my biggest takeaways is that the industry as a whole is wanting to understand more about “virtual connectedness.” In almost every workshop I attended, there was reference to it in some way: online communities, social networking, digital innovation, and the list goes on and on. How better to understand what many of our consumers want than to jump in and be a part of it!

Stay posted….

April Bell