Testing New Retail Store Concepts in Different US Markets

The Challenge

A national retail chain wanted to gather and evaluate customer feedback on its new stores including overall impressions, specific positives/likes (e.g. design, store format, shopping experience, etc.) as well as comparisons with specific competitors on key dimensions. These insights were critical to the successful national rollout for the newly designed stores.

The Solution

We proposed leveraging iGoldSMART™, our hybrid intercept and retail shopper journey research solution that yields deep qualitative and quantitative insights which are also statistically valid and projectable, to help fulfill the desired objectives. Our proposed approach was aimed at collecting “in-the-moment” feedback from store shoppers while they were in the test and control stores and going through their shopping experiences.

“Real-time” in-store testing and execution was completed in 2 successive weekends across multiple markets.

The Results

• By leveraging our proprietary solution, this national retailer received:
• Targeted “real-time” insights from actual customers in multiple markets, as they went through shopping experiences including verbatims, in-store videos, and quantitative insights
• Immediate access to incoming data (so there was no waiting for results!).
• Evaluation and comparison of stores in multiple markets for higher confidence levels.
•  Continuous monitoring of incoming data for guaranteed accuracy.
•  Richer, deeper, “in-the-moment” shopper journey insights that yielded several “aha” moments which would have been impossible in a traditional online survey.