Brand Switching at Retail Stores – and What You Need to be The Brand Leader

very CPG brand manager worries about brand switching. Brand managers make investments to build awareness, trial, purchase intent – only to lose the sale because the shopper switched along the way. And most brand managers think they know why, but really don’t.

Thousands of research efforts have been launched to help them determine:

• How much brand switching occurs
• When it occurs along the journey and why it occurs there
• The key influencers at the moment the decision is made

One of our CPG retail clients felt like there was a good deal of brand switching in their category – estimated to be 20% or so – based on past research. Their product managers felt it was higher – but didn’t have any data. Our research found that the actual amount of brand switching was 70% in one channel and over 50% in another channel. And the switching was primarily happening in the aisle and brand decisions were not being materially impacted by store associates, advertising or prices – but by packaging information, something they could totally control.

These insights allow them to refocus their packaging design, in-aisle promotion and word-of-mouth activities to drive immediate sales increases and category leadership. What was more concerning is that their past research efforts failed to identify the correct level, location or levers of brand switching – and that it had cost them millions in lost revenues.

Our experience is that 2 perspectives are needed to identify the truth of brand switching:

• Customer Journey Perspective: Understanding the customer journey and the degree to which brand preferences are created along the journey – and when they switch tells marketers where to focus messaging and promotional investments to make the biggest impact.
• “In-the-Moment” vs. “Post-Purchase” Research: Capturing brand purchase intent and actual brand purchase “in-the-moment” that a decision is made – not after. In-the-moment research identified that brand switching was 2X-3X higher than post-purchase research showed.

Customer Journey research is essential to helping understand the influences along the journey toward brand preference and selection – and with shoppers using online, social, media, phone and retail channels for information and purchasing, multiple of research methods are necessary to fully capture and assess the impacts. Much of this research may exist for brands – but too much of it is “touchpoint-focused” and too little of it is “customer-journey focused”.

“In-the-Moment” research required shop-along, eye-tracking and mobile ethnographic research to isolate the location and levers of the brand switching and determine who the brand “winners and losers” were “in-the-aisle”. In-the-moment research approaches aren’t new – just a little more expensive than post-purchase research approaches – and a lot more valuable.

Don’t let cost-focused procurement managers distract you from the valuable insights necessary for brand leadership. Investing in “in-the-Moment” Customer Journey research has a huge ROI. Leading companies are using customer journey research to identify and deliver real results:

• Revenue growth of 30% – 50%
• Retention improvements of 30 points
• NPS increases of 30-50 points

Call 1-800-549-7170 or send an email to nitin@goldresearchinc.com for a free consultation on this topic.
Gold Research is an award-winning Customer Journey Management firm with extensive experiences in B2C and B2B journey mapping, path-to-purchase research with a special focus in deploying “real-time” and behavioral/neuroscience research formats to gather in-the-moment customer insights.