11 Tips for Uninterrupted Connections with Mobile Black Friday Shoppers

Posted by MFour on Sep 18, 2018 7:00:00 AM

Black Friday 12Sept18

Steely Dan has spun many a memorable tune in a pop music career that earned it a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and one of them is right on target for every marketing and consumer insights pro who's gearing up for the big Thanksgiving shopping weekend: “When Black Friday comes, I’m gonna stake my claim.”

Steely Dan released its song, “Black Friday,” in 1975, when the title evoked disaster, not the biggest shopping day of the year. When Black Friday comes, brands and retailers need to claim as much market share as they can, and that means high stakes for the researchers whose data and analysis feeds product and marketing strategies.

A new report from Salesforce underscores why it’s especially important to make your research fast and flexible to obtain data day-by day-during the holiday shopping season. The key takeaway is that consumers will be using their smartphones moment-by-moment to shop and buy, just as they use them moment-by-moment for nearly everything else related to accessing, creating, and exchanging the information that drives most aspects of most mobile citizens’ economic and personal lives. Among the findings:

  • 71% of consumers will use mobile devices while shopping in a brick-and-mortar store this holiday season, according to Salesforce.
  • That’s a significant increase over the 62% who used phones in-store in 2017.
  • In-store smartphone use will rise to 83% for consumers in the key 18- to 44-year-old age demographic.

Those uses will vary – from buying on mobile for future delivery, rather than plucking a product from a shelf or rack and taking it to the checkout stand, to researching products, to calling mom for advice on whether striped or solid is the way to go for dad’s new shirt.

To keep up with today’s fast and flexible mobile consumers, consumer insights pros need to be fast and flexible themselves.

Think of shopping as a process that used to run on a monorail from physical store to physical store, but now runs on two train tracks, mobile shopping and brick-and-mortar stores, that continually overlap. To maximize success on Black Friday through Christmas Eve, retailers and brands need to keep close watch on consumers’ movements along both tracks. And to fill that need, MFour created Path-2-Purchase® Platform.

For the first time, clients are observing mobile consumers’ physical journeys through 12.5 million U.S. locations, including all stores of the top 1,000 retailers and restaurant chains. At the same time, they’re aligning seamlessly with the new reality of smartphones as consumers’ most important shopping tool at every step along the path to purchase, whether in-store or lying on the living room couch.

  • With Path-2-Purchase® you’ll target the consumers you need to understand, you’ll track their movements from store to store, and you’ll survey them at critical moments during or after a shopping visit. You also can reconnect with validated natural purchasers for in-home product use-tests. 
  • You’ll also gain unique context by appending extensive historical data that reveals your targeted consumers’ location journeys stretching back in time.
  • Besides knowing exactly where they’ve gone, you’ll get a head start on knowing who they are, thanks to extensive profiling surveys that the 2 million-plus consumers who have downloaded the Surveys On The Go® mobile consumer research app have answered. You’ll see who fits the consumer profiles you need to understand, and target your research accordingly.
  • For example, to prepare for Black Friday, you could start by identifying validated, first-party consumers who are observed regular visitors to your stores. No need to ask them whether and when they have visited relevant locations, because with Path-2-Purchase® you’ll have seen where they’ve been and know who they are.
  • When consumers in your chosen audience enter or exit any of your relevant research locations, they’ll be identified through mobile GeoValidation® and you’ll push them a survey notification on the spot.
  • If you need speedy data, you can expect a 25% response rate in one hour and 50% within 24 hours. Or you can stagger fielding if that’s the way to go, assured that the completes will arrive on schedule.
  • Ask about the shopping experience your consumers are having right now, or just had. Ask about their plans for Black Friday shopping. Ask whether they plan to shop for a shirt for dad, or any other product or category that’s relevant to your research.
  • Are your respondents already making a list and devising a strategy for holiday gift shopping? Who’s discount-oriented and planning to batter down doors or tap and scroll starting at 12:01 a.m. on Black Friday? Who hates fighting crowds and would rather shop when it’s less hectic, even if it costs more? If price isn’t their foremost motivator, then what is?
  • Now field a location-based survey asking the same kinds of questions – except this time targeting your competitors’ observed shoppers. Knowing them gives you your best chance of prying them away from the competition.
  • Once the holiday shopping season begins, you can keep a finger on consumers’ pulses by using quick-turnaround research options that will help you spot trends or address shopper-satisfaction issues in time for your stakeholders and decision-makers to press an advantage or correct a problem on the fly.
  • You can visualize and identify audiences for your study with Path-2-Purchase®, then execute a quick-turnaround project with MFourDIY®, the only all-mobile do-it-yourself research platform (and the only one where “DIY” is a bit of a misnomer, because you can count on prompt, live support when you need it, from an MFour staff specialist).

For more ideas on fast-turnaround research that connects you to validated, first-party mobile consumers in the mobile and physical spaces they inhabit, and in time to make a real difference in sales, you can take a look at a holiday-specific case study by clicking here.

And for a productive talk about how Path-2-Purchase® Platform and other mobile-app research tools can power your specific projects, just click here.

When Black Friday comes, you’ll stake your claim to the advanced, fast-reflex mobile research approaches you need to understand consumers whose mobile and physical worlds haven’t just collided, but melded into one.

Topics: mobile research, black friday, path-2-purchase, Path-2-Purchase™ Platform, consumer insights, holiday retail

Christmas in July? For Consumer Insights Pros, it's Part of the Job

Posted by MFour on Jul 5, 2018 7:00:00 AM

Christmas in July blog 28Jun18

If you’re a consumer insights professional for a brand or retailer, you’re probably getting ready to celebrate Christmas in July, although “celebrating” might not be quite the right word for it.

With so much revenue at stake during the holiday season, it’s smart to get an early jump on obtaining data that can give you an early read on consumers’ holiday spending inclinations and expectations. A baseline sense of their attitudes toward gift-shopping, travel and holiday parties could be the foundation for smart, data-informed thinking that will pay off during the year-end shopping crunch.

Those payoffs are potentially gigantic, so a few ounces of data-driven early preparation could reap a ton of success come the holidays. The National Retail Federation (NRF) reported that U.S. consumers spent $692 billion last November-December, not counting restaurants, gas stations and auto dealers. With that much money on the table, it’s worth your while to take a systematic, data-informed look ahead.

A wide range of retail categories historically have earned 20% or more of their annual revenues during November and December, according to the NRF. They includes jewelry stores, department stores, discount department stores, electronics and appliance retailers, clothing and shoe stores, sporting goods stores, hobby shops, book stores and music stores.

Here are examples of early-insights holiday research projects that might be worth exploring:

  • What are your loyal customers’ deep-down feelings about what makes for a great Christmas- shopping experience?

  • Start by gathering observational location-tracking data to identify your year-round loyalists (or your competitors’ loyalists).
  • Survey them now about what has made past Christmas shopping experiences special, or disappointing? What they say in July could be at least as revealing as what they say during the post-Thanksgiving heat of the hunt.
  • What makes special holiday features such as decorations and live Christmas music memorable and appealing rather than merely cliched? What turnoffs get in the way of a satisfying holiday shopping experience?
  • Art supply stores and hobby stores can track, identify and survey their loyalists and non-buyers who shop nearby. Get a preliminary sense of the market for DIYcreativity in gift-giving and greeting cards. 
  • When should casual dining restaurants launch special holiday menus? What offers would induce their regular customers to ramp up their patronage by organizing larger dine-out dinner parties with friends and coworkers? When do consumers most want to socialize outside their immediate families?

If you think it’s worth breaking a sweat in July to land data and insights that will pay off when "Jingle Bells" is in the air, we should talk soon. Set up a productive and informative demo by clicking here.

Meanwhile, here’s wishing a happy and safe Fourth of July to all.

Topics: market research, consumer insights, Christmas shopping, holiday retail

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