“An understanding of consumer purchase behavior must be based on knowledge of human emotion and include the paramount influence that emotions have on decision-making.”

That’s the fundamental takeaway from “How Emotions Influence How We Buy,” an article in Psychology Today. It carries direct significance for consumer insights pros, especially those who gather competitive intelligence. To understand why people buy one brand over another, or shop one store over another, you have to connect with them while their feelings about a shopping experience are still running high. We call it the Point-of-Emotion^®. To accomplish this you don't need to stand with them physically, side-by-side. Instead, you join them by leveraging advanced mobile market research technology that lets you find and survey shoppers through their smartphones.

Here's how it works:

When your targeted consumers naturally enter a store – yours or a competitor’s – they automatically receive a survey invitation on their phones, via an in-app push notification. Invitees respond far more quickly and attentively to pushes than to the old method of requiring them to check their email for a link to an online survey.

• You can ask shoppers to take a survey while they’re still in a competitor's store, for feedback on experiences they’re having right now with product placement, selection, promotions, service and overall shopping atmosphere. You’re meeting them at the crucial Point-of-Emotion^®.

• Or you can hold off while they're still inside the store, and invite them just after they've left. Within minutes, survey responses will start streaming in, telling you what your competitors' customers experienced in the aisles and at checkout, while it's still fresh in mind. 

• After-visit surveys get response rates of 25% within one hour of notification, and 50% within 24 hours. Nothing else gets you as close to the moment of purchase and the Point-of-Emotion^®.

• To get the most intense emotional feedback, you can ask respondents to make “video selfies” on their phones, in which you’ll see the emotional impact of their experiences on their faces, hear it in their voices, and listen as they put their experiences into their own words. 

• When it’s time to present your findings and recommendations to decision-making stakeholders, mobile video puts them, too, at the customers' Point-of-Emotion^®. Seeing and hearing opinions  from actual consumers grabs their attention and makes the consumer story you're telling more real.

• Smartphone capabilities also give you reliable validation of purchases. Just ask respondents to photograph or make screen shots of receipts, or take pictures of the products.

Follow Consumers All Along the Path-2-Purchase^®

In competitive intelligence, as in other forms of consumer insights research, you can't afford to ask people about shopping experiences they had more than a day or two after the fact. By then, recall has faded and answers turn unreliable. Commonplace screener questions such as “Have you shopped at Target in the past 90 days?” or “Recalling the last time you bought toothpaste, which of these brands did you consider?” will get you recall-biased data that is mainly just guesswork on the respondents' part.

Until now, the research industry has settled for guesswork instead of data because there was no better alternative. But thanks to Point-of-Emotion^® mobile geolocation research, the guessing game is over.

Now you can start your competitive intelligence projects by instantly visualizing your targeted consumers’ actual journeys to more than 12.5 million commercial locations in the U.S., including the top 1,000 retailers.

You’ll see their validated visitation data on Path-2-Purchase^® Platform, a unique tool that identifies who shops at your competitors’ stores, how often, on what days of the week and times of day, and for how long.

Path-2-Purchase^® tracks members of a demographically and geographically representative, first-party consumer panel of more than 2.5 million U.S. smartphone owners, ages 13 and up.

They’re all strictly validated, because they’re all being tracked on mobile. Every member has joined by downloading Surveys On The Go^® (SOTG), the definitive mobile research app, to his or her phone. All research activity, including location tracking, takes place via the app. Consumers have opted in to allow tracking, in exchange for the location-specific survey opportunities you'll be sending their way.

It’s been said that a big part of success lies in just showing up. By applying in-app mobile solutions to competitor insights, you'll show up when and where it matters the most -- standing next to your competitors' customers, asking questions at the Point-of-Emotion^®. To learn more about how to connect at the right place and time for the most accurate, most revealing competitive intelligence insights, just complete the form below.

Football season is back (yessss!!), and with it comes a tip for consumer insights pros: one of the key performance indicators for a market research team’s success is how well it can intercept consumers during their natural buying journeys.

In the NFL, interceptions are often game-changers, and it takes a rare combination of talent and skill to intercept. The key attributes are quickness and anticipation, and an uncanny knack for being in just the right position when the ball is in the air.

Quickness and being in the right place at the right time are also crucial to collecting quality consumer data that will give decision-making stakeholders the field position they need to advance their companies’ or brands’ marketing and sales goals.

In theory, retailers can get reliable (albeit seldom timely) data on what’s actually being bought. But they get no real insight into customers' motivations – the "why" behind the "what." The problem becomes exponentially harder when the subject is non-buying behavior. Who entered a store but failed to buy everything they’d intended to purchase? What did they not buy? Why did it happen, and how much revenue did the store leave on the table?

The answers, and the ability to defend against non-buying, won’t be forthcoming unless customer experience research teams learn how to intercept.

There’s no better way to collect premium data than by intercepting it from consumers naturally, and in real time, as they go about their daily buying journeys. So in the spirit of NFL players poring over game film to get a competitive edge, let’s look at a case study that illustrates how natural intercepts work.

The Problem: Researchers for a leading retail chain that does a huge volume in CPG sales were trying to tackle one of their business’s most frustrating problems: losing revenue because many customers who entered a store didn't buy everything they had intended to purchase.

The Answer: For the retail chain in question, all it took was a discussion with MFour reps about GeoValidation^® – a proprietary capability driven by the advanced GPS technology embedded in the Surveys on the Go^® research app. Clients track app-using U.S. consumers’ movements and verify when they arrive and then leave a location of research interest.

• In this case, all members of MFour’s first-party consumer panel who entered one of the client’s stores were located on arrival, and received a push notification of a survey opportunity upon departure.

• When they responded – with a 25% response rate within an hour and 50% within 24 hours – the process of intercept followed by data return was complete.

• Qualifiers for the study were 400 consumers nationwide, who said they had not purchased everything they had intended to buy.

• In beauty products, 31% of non-purchasers cited price as the factor that discouraged them from buying; 37% said they had simply been unable to find the item they wanted, or that it was not available.

• For shoppers looking for personal care products, 31% cited price and 28% cited unavailability or inability to find the intended item.

• Among candy and snack intenders, 20% said they didn’t buy because of pricing, and 24% because what they wanted wasn’t there or couldn’t be found.

• Among grocery and beverage shoppers who said they had left without an item they had arrived intending to purchase, 44% cited price and 24% said items were not available or couldn’t be found.

• Asked whether they were satisfied with their overall shopping experience, 57% of non-buyers rated their visit as an 8 or a 9 on a nine-point satisfaction scale. 24% graded their experience in the poor to middling range (1 to 6 on the scale).

The study gave the client clarity on factors that were costing it millions in revenue each day nationwide, and potentially alienating many customers. The previously unobtainable data from natural intercepts gave researchers their first clearly-informed look at the problem, so they could recommend a game plan to win back the sales and revenue that the chain’s stores were letting slide through their hands.

For an informative and productive conversation about how to program natural intercepts into your research game plan, just click here.

The Challenge:

Marketers of a sports drink brand were curious whether their beverage was being properly placed and displayed at a specific major retail chain's stores. Additionally, the beverage maker wanted to know if shoppers who bought its brand were satisfied with the selection of flavors and sizes?

The Solution:

MFour conducted a GPS geolocation study of the retail chain’s shoppers, intercepting them naturally as they entered a store and surveying them immediately on their smartphones via the mobile app Surveys on the Go^®. Shoppers who said they had bought the client's sports drink from the retailer within the past 90 days qualified for the survey and were directed to find it. All 250 respondents also answered a photo question in the survey with their smartphone camera, showing the shelf display of the product and its competitors.

Key findings:

1. Confusion over where to look:

• 34% of shoppers said they had a hard time finding the drink.

• Shoppers named four different aisles where they had expected to find the drink.

• Most looked first among bottled waters (39%) or sports drinks (48%).

• Others initially checked in the juice or soda aisles.

• 98% eventually did find the drink.

2. Dissatisfaction with display and product availability

• 34% said they were dissatisfied with the display.

• 36% said the product was not neatly arranged on the shelf.

• 51% said they couldn’t find the flavor they wanted.

• 53% couldn’t find the quantity-per-package they wanted.

• 16% said the sports drink was not in stock.

3. Threat to in-store sales

• 57% of respondents said they would be willing to buy the drink online.
  

Insights and recommendations:

• Establish a single, consistent aisle location.

• Display it with bottled waters or sports drinks, but not either-or.

• Offer a single-bottle option, in addition to multi-bottle packages.

• Provide more flavor variety and keep shelves well-stocked.

• Improve visibility of the drink, which was often on the bottom shelf.
  
  

To learn how to build your own market research solutions like this and get results in hours, days, or just a few weeks, get in touch with us by clicking here.

The new Path 2 Purchase™ Platform  powers unprecedented consumer insights opportunities by giving researchers new ways to visualize observed behavioral data and enrich it with validated, first-party survey data.

The key that opens the door is continuous tracking of mobile consumers’ journeys through space & time.

• By “space” we mean 12.5 million U.S. locations, including all stores of the top 1,000 retailers.

• By “time” we mean always and continuously, because Path 2 Purchase™ never sleeps.

• Whose movements are being tracked? Members of the nation’s largest all-mobile panel.

• Why are they special? They form a uniquely engaged, first-party research audience who accurately represent the entire population of U.S. smartphone users.

More than 2 million consumers have downloaded Surveys On The Go^®, the proprietary consumer research app that powers Path 2 Purchase™ and  other MFour offerings, including MFourDIY^®. The panel grows by about 2,000 new arrivals each day, strictly by word of mouth.

Another fact worth knowing: churn for the average online panel is nearly ten times greater than turnover among Surveys On The Go^® users.

Here’s more about how Path 2 Purchase™ works, and what you'll be able to accomplish: 

• Surveys On The Go^® users agree to turn on their devices’ location function, knowing they’ll receive opportunities to take location-based surveys and enjoy reliable cash rewards.

• Tracking their journeys through retail space, coupled with validated demographic and ethnographic profiling, creates unique targeting possibilities.

• Path 2 Purchase™ users get access to a dashboard that enables them to choose among more than 200 demographic and ethnographic criteria.

• You select which consumers to track, and which ones to survey, using special GeoNotification^® alerts, to learn the “why” behind the “where” of their day-in, day-out journeys.

• The data you’ll see as you play with different time/place/profile combinations on the Path 2 Purchase™ dashboard is pulled instantly from an exhaustive Consumer Knowledge Center, where all the location data coming from all those phones is continually stored, sorted, and updated by the minute.

• As you view each combination of space, time and profile, consumer segments you hadn’t even considered might well jump out at you and point the way to surprising new research possibilities.

• For example, who has been to a Walmart four times over the past month? Who are the Walmart-rejecters who never go – and do they shop at Target instead?

• Does a certain profile group prefer shopping on weekday evenings, or is it more likely to go to a Walmart or Target during weekends?

• Path 2 Purchase™ lets you identify them, then go a step further by surveying them about why they do what they do, with an incidence rate of 100%, because you’re only targeting the exact validated consumers you need to talk to.

To summarize, this is right-place, right-time location research on steroids, enabling you to be absolutely certain of consumers’ paths through space & time, then reach out to them at the optimal place and time: when they’re currently in a store, or just after they’ve left. It’s the ideal workaround to eliminate recall bias. It’s the way to exercise your research mastery.

To schedule a Path 2 Purchase™ demo and learn more about how it will help you capture the specific insights you need, just click here.