“The amount of time a shopper spends in a store on any given trip is finite, but the amount of money they spend on that trip is up to the retailer”
……Herb Sorensen, Author of Inside the Mind of the Shopper.
In addition to these conflicting forces, an increasing number of smaller-format stores are emerging, providing shoppers with savings in time, effort, and money. However, this convenience comes at the cost of a reduced selection of items and choices for consumers to explore Add to those diametrically opposed forces, there is now an expanding number of smaller format stores that offer the shopper savings of time, effort and money with the trade-off being a limited number of items and choices for the shopper to consider.
The result of the barrage of new options, whether they be larger or smaller formats, has challenged the reason for mid size retailers to exist, or at the very least continue to thrive.
In other words, the time a shopper spends in a store doesn’t directly correlate with how much they spend. Beyond a certain point, shoppers speed up, buy less frequently, and soon head for the checkout as their “fun meter” maxes out.
Brands and retailers continuously expand store spaces and fill them with new products and options for shoppers. Meanwhile, modern shoppers are increasingly time-constrained. Ask retailers how long customers spend in their stores per visit, and they’ll likely be uncertain or significantly overestimate the average trip duration.
Mathematically, the Shopper Efficiency Formula below, derived from numerous tracking studies, reflects the finding that the more time and effort a shopper spends navigating and finding items—rather than deciding what to buy—the smaller their basket size, both in the number of items and total expenditure.
The challenge for traditional supermarkets and all physical retail stores is to find the right balance between expanded variety and in-store messaging that does a good job of helping the shopper make better and faster choices, and not creating choice and visual overload that often frustrates the shopper and sends them to the checkout even before they have found all the items they originally sought.
MHC and our shopper scientists will establish a performance baseline for store(s) using observational and qualitative tools, then provide adjustments to product and category placement and enhance in-store communication to optimize sales opportunities during the shopper’s visit.
