NEWS3 May 2012
UK— To better understand consumers as shoppers, researchers need to stop relying so much on claimed behaviour and focus instead on actual behaviour, said Relish Research’s senior partner Monique Drummond at today’s MRS Shopper Research Conference.
Traditionally, agencies have relied on the information they glean from focus groups and surveys, but Drummond and co-presenter Helen Bennie of Shopper Insight warned that much of this post-rationalised information is useless when a consumer enters a store and starts making decisions, many of them unconscious, about what they are going to spend their money on.
Agencies carrying out research for new packaging, for example, spend too much time concentrating on what information they can get out of focus groups. “They recruit very specific people and go on for too long. Two hours is a long time to speak about a small piece of advertising,” said Drummond.
The solution, the presenters said, is to employ technologies such as eye-tracking, which can be used to provide a clearer picture of how shoppers behave while they are actually engaged in the purchase process.