Shopper Marketing & Privacy: How far is far?
In the current economic situation, the customer is holding, undeniably, the pivotal point of Retailer’s marketing activities. Under these circumstances, knowing their customer is more significant than ever before for Retailers. While retailers and CPG’s can drive shoppers to their store and their product, they have not been able to fully understand the shoppers’ behavior inside the store.
In these challenging times, both Retailers and CPG’s are waking up to the question - ‘how to get the right customer to the right aisle, to the right product they want’.
Shopper Marketing and Shopper Privacy
When we realize that the customer is at the focal point and the market place has come down to the aisles and shelves, it is all but natural for the companies to rush to gain insights about the customer, aisle and products. BusinessWeek carried a story on how companies are turning to technology to better understand their customer’s shopping behavior and the various technologies to use despite the recessionary times.
With the gathered insights, retailers are busy designing and communicating promotions to shoppers. This whole process, famously known as Shopper Marketing, leaves the retailers to walk a thin line between Shopper Privacy and the effectiveness of the marketing programs. As the technology proliferation happens in shopper marketing, the question that stands tall in front of the retailers is - how far can they go to collect the data, without crossing the line of Shopper Privacy? How far is far? Where is the line drawn between shopper privacy and shopper marketing?
Broadly, retailers go through 4 phases in Shopper Marketing:
1. Data collection
2. Analytics
3. Decision making/program design
4. Communication
In the first phase, data is collected about the shoppers and their activities in the stores (and aisles and shelves). The second phase is where the collected data is analyzed through BI tools and various insights about the products, shelves, aisles and shoppers are generated. Based on the insights, the marketers decide on the right mix of products, shelves and aisles that can attract the most profitable customer. They also design appropriate marketing programs and messages based on the insights in this phase. In the final phase, the messages and programs are communicated to the chosen consumer as she shops.
Off the above 4 stages, the consumer interaction is highest in the first and last stage. And if these two stages are not handled properly, retailers run the risk of lowering the effectiveness of their Shopper Marketing Programs and as well shunning the shoppers away.
The moment of truth provides a range of options for the retailers of which the extremes are being most generic and most specific. The below matrix might be a very broad framework for the retailers to choose the quadrant in which they want to operate with respect to Shopper Marketing –
Shopper Marketing and Shopper Privacy
When we realize that the customer is at the focal point and the market place has come down to the aisles and shelves, it is all but natural for the companies to rush to gain insights about the customer, aisle and products. BusinessWeek carried a story on how companies are turning to technology to better understand their customer’s shopping behavior and the various technologies to use despite the recessionary times.
With the gathered insights, retailers are busy designing and communicating promotions to shoppers. This whole process, famously known as Shopper Marketing, leaves the retailers to walk a thin line between Shopper Privacy and the effectiveness of the marketing programs. As the technology proliferation happens in shopper marketing, the question that stands tall in front of the retailers is - how far can they go to collect the data, without crossing the line of Shopper Privacy? How far is far? Where is the line drawn between shopper privacy and shopper marketing?
Broadly, retailers go through 4 phases in Shopper Marketing:
1. Data collection
2. Analytics
3. Decision making/program design
4. Communication
In the first phase, data is collected about the shoppers and their activities in the stores (and aisles and shelves). The second phase is where the collected data is analyzed through BI tools and various insights about the products, shelves, aisles and shoppers are generated. Based on the insights, the marketers decide on the right mix of products, shelves and aisles that can attract the most profitable customer. They also design appropriate marketing programs and messages based on the insights in this phase. In the final phase, the messages and programs are communicated to the chosen consumer as she shops.
Off the above 4 stages, the consumer interaction is highest in the first and last stage. And if these two stages are not handled properly, retailers run the risk of lowering the effectiveness of their Shopper Marketing Programs and as well shunning the shoppers away.
The moment of truth provides a range of options for the retailers of which the extremes are being most generic and most specific. The below matrix might be a very broad framework for the retailers to choose the quadrant in which they want to operate with respect to Shopper Marketing –
Shoppers’ privacy has been a cause of solicitousness. Kim Ann Zimmermann, Managing Editor, Grocery Headquarters Magazine, discusses in her blog how her initial anxiety about shopper data protection was abated.
