Shopper Behaviour

Definition

There are fundamental patterns of shopper behaviour that are so consistent to be considered ‘law-like’ – the same in supermarkets, large hypermarkets, small convenience and speciality stores, shown in multiple countries (US, UK, China and Australia) over the last decade.

Key Findings

Shoppers’ store choices are governed by: convenience, pricing and assortment.
Store choice is a repeated, habitual choice, low cognitive task where we go back the stores we know.
The most common number of items in a basket is 1…includes large hypermarkets with >40,000 items!
NBD distribution of very light buying, small basket sizes – biggest growth opportunity is from selling additional items to light buyers.
Shoppers frequently don’t recall promotions and can’t recall the price of an item immediately after adding it to their basket.
Most shopping trips are short – two thirds of all shopping trips, and a third of all supermarket trips are completed in less than 10 minutes.
Shoppers tend to buy few items, on a number of short trips; on average 2.3 trips per week.
Shoppers only visit a small portion of the store…on average the area of supermarket visited on a trip is only 1/3.
Shoppers follow predictable shopper paths (‘Race track” and “U-turn”), ducking in-and-out of aisles and avoiding tightly packed areas.
Offline and online shoppers behave similarly in respect to speed – most choices take less than 10 seconds in supermarkets and less than 15 seconds online. The explanation presumably lies in the fact that buyers have already established loyalties and therefore have little need for evaluation when shopping these categories online (or in-store).

Best Practice

Report 64: The Fundamentals of Shopper Behaviour
Report 67: Shopping Takes Only Seconds…in-store and online
Report 88: Endcap Insights – Visual Reach and Sales

Academic Publications:
Fundamental basket size patterns and their relation to retailer performance
How the layout of a unit price label affects eye-movements and product choice: an eye-tracking investigation

Make it easier for shoppers looking for your product category and brand to find them fast.
Brand managers need to make it as easy as possible for shoppers to find their brand online.
Conduct market research to find out where customers expect to find the product, and what cues they use to navigate towards it.
Focus on helping shoppers recognise and find brands quickly on shelf by providing visual cues, such as images or colours, leveraging your brand’s Distinctive Assets, colours, shapes, characters and logos.
Retailers should keep stock location static. Brand managers should undertake minimal changes to packaging, unless it is to improve visibility and recognition of the brand, to keep it easy for existing customers to find the brand/SKU.
Consider shopper flow and density to identify locations for secondary displays in-store to ensure that every shopper has the opportunity to see and shop the category even if they visit just a small proportion of the store.
Aim for reach in shopper communications.

Reports (10)

Reports

Showing 10 results

The sales importance of non-buyers

REPORT 131
AUGUST 2024

Consumers who do not buy a brand at all in one year are an important source of sales the next year. They can be expected to account for approximately 35-45% of this year’s revenue. This highlights that marketers must design all aspects of communication for the brand - from advertising to pack design - for very, very occasional buyers.

Report 113
November 2022

Children are shoppers too - but they shop via their parents. This report looks at how commonly children accompany adults on supermarket shopping trips and at their in-store influence. We analyse 33,000 observations of individual supermarket shopper parties and 30 hours of video recordings of 89 trips across four supermarkets in two Australian capital cities. We examine childrens’ effect on trip length, the product requests they make, the parental response they receive, and the frequency of potentially disruptive behaviours children draw upon to exert their influence.

REPORT 100
FEBRUARY 2021

To grow, brands have to attract new buyers, yet consumers keep returning to brands already in their repertoires (loyalty). This exploratory report investigates how often new brand buying occurs and what disrupts habitual repeat brand buying behaviour.

REPORT 98
SEPTEMBER 2020

In this report we examine what to expect from consumers during the looming recession. We show new analysis of what happened in the last recession as well as the work of others on economic cycles. We also briefly examine shopper behaviour during the pandemic/panic buying period in early 2020.

Report 77
JANUARY 2018

Supermarkets provide physical availability for packaged goods brands. But not all in-store ‘real estate’ is equal, as shoppers do not visit every area of the store. Shoppers navigate a supermarket following some predictable patterns. As a result, some locations in-store are more desirable for marketers than others.

Report 76
DECEMBER 2017

Physical Availability is about making the brand easy to find and easy to buy. Brands need to be available in [all] the places and at the times that consumers think about buying the category. While consumers are naturally loyal, there are often multiple brands that are salient for a category need. If one of the Mentally Available brands is less easy to find or more difficult to buy than a rival brand, the consumer will likely buy the rival.

REPORT 71
DEC 2016

This report documents similar fundamental knowledge about human buying behaviour. We present a framework for thinking about typical consumers based on insights from decades of empirical marketing studies.

We document patterns of typical buying behaviour, and provide reasons by making reference to research into memory and the human brain. The evidence has important implications for marketing strategy ranging from targeting and segmentation to media planning and brand building.

REPORT 64
July 2013

This is classic science, documenting how people really shop. We've discovered very clear patterns - that apply to both big and small stores. This report may change the way you think about shoppers, it's certainly fundamental knowledge that anyone who runs a store, or sells good in retail, needs to know.

REPORT 67
November 2014

Our latest report is a good reminder of the realities of shopper behaviour. Most purchase decisions are quick and shoppers spend very little time deciding between brands. This is our first report to compare findings in-store with online shopping behaviour, and we observed important similarities.

REPORT 12
April 2002

We examine whether personal shopping for products like books, music, computer games, mobile phones, clothes and fashion follow similar patterns to 'familiy' or routine shopping.