‘Behavior Activated Research’
Benefits P&G’s Pampers Brand
By James Tenser
Procter & Gamble’s Pampers brand used Catalina Marketing’s
in-store network to deliver ads to category shoppers, track their responses, and later recruit a study sample for market research.
P&G used a technique called “Behavior Activated Research,” or BAR. The program results? The targeted ad messages positively influenced consumer awareness, attitudes, and purchase behavior for Pamper’s line of training pants.
The project results were presented as a case study at the GEMCON conference in Las Vegas by Carrie Birth, a consumer market knowledge executive for P&G Baby Care in Cincinnati and Susan Robinson, vice president of comScore Networks in Chicago. The BAR method was developed by comScore, a market research firm.
“The main reason we decided to use BAR was to touch base with the consumer where she makes her decision, at the first moment of truth in the store,” said Birth later. “This vehicle allowed us to capture feedback where it matters most, when she is making that choice to buy Pampers or not.”
Robinson outlined the elements of the Pampers BAR program in a recent interview. “P&G chose the BAR method because we were able to help them select a sample of actual P&G and competitive buyers – based on frequency of purchase,” she said.
Use of the Catalina Marketing platform allowed Pampers to identify shoppers who purchased Pampers or competing brand disposable training pants or diapers and immediately deliver one of four advertising messages using the checkout printer. The messages described Pampers’ Toddler Transitions line of potty training pants, which encompasses First Steps, Easy Ups, and Feel ‘n Learn branded products. It also directed shoppers to the Web site at www.pampers.com.
Since the Catalina system is triggered by a UPC code at the POS scanner, the ad copy could be varied according to the target group. Buyers of the Toddler Transitions products received a message that acknowledged their purchase. Buyers of competitive brands were offered reasons to switch, while the copy for diaper purchasers introduced them to Toddler Transitions line, for example.
Robinson said the ad messages were distributed over a flight lasting several weeks, with some test subjects receiving multiple messages. A short time later, recipients of the advertisements were invited to respond to a telephone survey. Here another capability of the Catalina system was put to beneficial use – its ability to recognize shoppers over time based upon their frequent shopper card or payment card number.
The survey invitations, also printed at the checkout, offered a $5 incentive and provided a toll-free telephone number. Response rates were approached 5%, said Robinson, attracting a total test group of 610 individuals who had received at least three ad messages and 581 in a control group who had shopped at least three times during the campaign.
“So often with research it is hard to know who you are really talking to,” said Birth. “Here we had the proof. We knew if these consumers had bought us because they only got the invite based on register SKU codes.”
The survey utilized an interactive voice response (IVR) system that permitted respondents to answer questions and leave open ended comments. Questions probed for measurement of five main areas: unaided and aided awareness, message recall, purchase intent, product attribute ratings, and behavioral purchase data.
Results showed that the targeted advertising messages did in fact increase customer awareness and purchase behavior by “statistically significant” amounts, Robinson said. Actual purchases, not just purchase intention, could be confirmed using the Catalina database. “We have shown here that we really do create some movement, which is really cool.”
“This just grazes the surface of what Catalina Marketing can do for manufacturers and retailers,” said Nicole Andriso, a spokeswoman for Catalina, St. Petersburg, Fla.
“In a fast changing world,” said Birth, “we need to continually seek new and innovative touchpoints to reach mom and BAR was a great experiment to try and do this. It proved worthwhile. We gained deep insights into how to improve this messaging to mom, which proved to be the foundation of our marketing plan for the following year.”
Collaboration and Customer Experience
To Drive Agenda at GEMCON
Collaboration between CPG manufacturers and retailers and customer experience will be key topics on the agenda as leading retailers and manufacturers gather at The Canyons Grand Resort in Park City, Utah Oct. 9-11 for the 15th annual Global Electronic Marketing Conference (GEMCON).
“Our goal is to boost retailers’ efforts to leverage customer insight, not only in the marketing area, but also within retail merchandising and operations, and in fact across the supply chain as a whole,” said Jon Robertson, managing director of the RSC division of Ogden Associates, which sponsors the conference.
“While technology-enabled marketing has long been the focus of GEMCON, retailers and suppliers increasingly understand that the real win will be even greater. It will come from ensuring that customer insight is put to a larger task: driving higher sales and profits, loyalty, and competitive advantage through company-wide focus on putting the customer first,” he said.
The conference has long been the “go-to” place for information and idea-sharing by food retailers and suppliers concerning Customer and Database Marketing and associated technologies. Widely considered to be the premier conference in its niche, GEMCON stands to gain additional prominence through a recent change in ownership. The retail research and consultancy firm Ogden Associates acquired the conference from Retail Systems Consulting. Carlene Thissen, founder of GEMCON, maintains a role in the new organization.
Each year retail excellence is recognized at GEMCON through the Global Electronic Marketing (GEM) awards program. In keeping with the broadened themes of the conference, the 2006 GEM Awards will also highlight excellence in enhancing the customer experience, and in improving retailer-supplier cooperation to meet and exceed customer expectations.
For information about the GEM Awards program, and GEMCON registration, exhibits and sponsorships, email Ogden at GEMCON2006@ogdenconsultants.com
FEBRUARY 2006
How Trading Partners Can Benefit
By Sharing Shopper Data
By James Tenser
CPG marketers and retailers have long agreed on the potential benefits of data-sharing as a basis for co-marketing and promotion. Unfortunately, the mechanism for actual sharing has been an obstacle for most. Retailers regard shopper data as their own,
and feel a justifiable need to protect consumer privacy. Marketers who build their own proprietary databases have similar, understandable constraints.
But there is a solution that benefits both trading partners, according to Deborah Grassi, retail and CPG industry consultant for Acxiom Corporation, a database marketing firm based in Little Rock, Ark.
At a recent conference, Grassi outlined how her firm served as a third-party for data sharing to help a major grocer leverage its frequent shopper data to support store-tailored merchandise assortment, staff scheduling, and promotion decisions.
“An intermediary protects privacy for both sides,” she explained in a later interview. “Sharing becomes possible because the provider can de-dupe the retailer and manufacturer bases and be a resource for them to share [customer] insights anonymously.”
Grassi described in her talk how a regional grocery chain retained her firm to help leverage value from a frequent shopper card database. Its goal was to win a greater share of customer wallet in certain categories. Among questions the regional grocer raised:
- What does my target shopper look like throughout the day?
- What is my target shopper’s share of wallet in my store and in my competitor’s?
- What is my untapped opportunity with my target shoppers?
- How can I leverage this information within the enterprise?
Grassi’s team approached these questions by first crossing purchase data from the chain’s loyalty database against data within its own massive consumer databases, which are compiled from multiple sources. It overlaid demographic data and attitudinal (panel) data to facilitate clustering of households by both lifestage and shopping behavior. Acxiom maintains a proprietary clustering schema called Personicx that classifies households into 70 clusters that roll up to 21 consumer life stage groups. The resultant analysis allowed the retailer to act on:
- Differences between morning, afternoon and evening shoppers, and classification of those groups as separate targets.
- Targeting of items to promote and advertise by household clusters, permitting more efficient spending of coop dollars and versioning of circulars.
- Store-level tailoring of merchandising assortments.
- Deployment of store associates across key service departments and day parts, to better serve the types of customers who shop at various times of day.
Grassi explained that the kind of household-level psychographic and attitudinal data used in this effort have become available only recently. “Technical advances allow compilation and data integration to become a lot more executable,” she said, adding “really big databases are needed to crunch this kind of data.”
Grassi cited other examples where CPG marketers and retailers used intermediated data collaboration to meet store-level goals. In one instance, a membership warehouse club leveraged a pet food vendor’s database of pet owners and its own membership roster to distinguish among pet owners who bought pet food from the retailer; pet owners who did not buy pet food from the retailer; and non-buyers of pet food. Direct mail promotions were targeted to subsets identified by lifestage and pet-related attitudes. In a controlled test, the targeted group showed an $8.5 million sales increment over a
12-week period.
With help from an intermediary like Acxiom, these data manipulation techniques can support joint manufacturer-retailer programs, she added, without the need for either party to expose proprietary data to the other. More detailed household data allows marketers to create clusters that are more relevant than demographics.
“We can differentiate people not only by the ways they are similar (age, race, income, etc.), but also by understanding the ways they are different at different stages of their lives,” she said.
Shoppers Want Loyalty Programs
But Value Privacy, Says NRF Study
Retailers will need to strike a balance between offering loyalty programs and collecting customer information.
That’s the key message from an NRF Foundation report released at the annual National Retail Federation show in New York. The report, co-developed with Adjoined Consulting and sponsored by SAP, provides insights into what retailers can do to better meet untapped shopper desires and increase revenues and market shares.
Now more than ever, retailers are being challenged to create loyalty among their customers. According to the study, the number of shoppers stating that they were long-term loyal customers dropped in 2006 to only 77.2 percent compared to 83.8 percent in 2005.
While consumers do want to pledge their loyalty, retailers are going to have a tough time figuring out just how to build their allegiance, according to the report. That’s because consumers are only willing to share a small portion of the much-needed personal information that retailers need to develop traditional loyalty programs.
According to the study, the most acceptable information shoppers were willing to give retailers include their name (89.8%), e-mail address (78.1%), street address (60.7%), and past transactions (46.8%). Consumers were least likely to allow retailers to track weight (14.4%), income (12.5%), job title (12.1%), employer (10.9%) and net worth (8.2%).
“Retailers looking to create loyalty will need to walk a fine line between specializing their services to customers and invading their privacy,” said Kathy Mance, NRF Foundation Vice President. “The more trust and goodwill a retailer builds, the more likely it is they will have a long-term loyal customer base.”
When it comes to reaching new customers in 2006, television (31.7%) has replaced direct mail (21.0%) as the best way to influence their selection of a new retailer. Another underestimated, but influential media choice, was word-of-mouth (17.7%).
While Internet advertising continues to grow exponentially, it still has little influence over consumers looking to choose a new retailer. Only 3.5 percent of consumers found Internet advertising effective. Other ineffective advertising choices included advertising before a movie (2.3%) product placement (1.8%), and radio ads (0.4%).
“While the fading of the 30-second spot is underway on Madison Avenue, retail consumers clearly still see TV as the most effective way to choose a ‘new’ retailer,” said Gary A. Williams, managing officer of research for Adjoined Consulting. “Traditional advertising isn’t going away anytime soon, but is more likely to morph into the integrated channel approach consumers already desire when making a purchase.”
A key finding in the 2005 report was that consumers wanted to be able to shop and buy seamlessly across multiple channels such as the physical store, online and catalog. Today, consumers are rewarding retailers that employ a true integrated multi-channel approach to the shopping experience. Most consumers (70.2%) use a combination of all three shopping channels compared to stores (only 17.5%) or online (only 2.9%). Of those consumers who choose physical locations, indoor malls (36.0%) were the preferred option, followed by stand alone (28.4%) and strip malls (14.5%).
