At a breakfast event in Sydney on the 28th February, Coles store development and operations director, Stuart Machin, Brian Walker and Katharina Kuehn of Retail Doctor Group and IBM’s Peter Butler spoke to a sell-out audience of business leaders about the changing paradigm in shopper behaviour and the way we engage with this.
All speakers were in agreement that consumers are instrumented, intelligent and interconnected making them more in charge then ever before. As a result, retailers and brands must shift the way in which they both obtain and strategically use consumer insights to build operationally fit businesses.
Speaking about the Coles turnaround strategy, Machin spoke of the critical need to listen to your consumers and adapt to their needs. He also spoke of the importance of giving back to communities and ensuring as a business you “do one good thing after another and apply grit”.
Brian Walker commented, “the presented findings reveal that consumers have a clearly defined expectation of what they want from a retailer and brand both now and in the future, challenging retailers to deploy they resources more effectively. Consumers are in charge and if we want to stay one step ahead of them, it’s critical that we predict their behaviour and exceed their expectations. Using the right consumer insights we can implement truly relevant brand and operational strategies for this omni-channel retail world.”
At the breakfast, Walker and Kuehn released the findings of Retail Doctor Group and i-Link Research’s 2012 Australian Retail Consumer Study. The study set out to prove the importance of new consumer insights’ tools, specifically Retail Doctor Group’s neuro-psychological consumer profiling method. This proprietary tool enables retail brands to define their target customer type by their subconscious drivers. The research proved the clear correlation between different consumer personality types and their purchasing behaviour, providing evidence that retailers can now take a more predictive approach to understanding their customers.
“If consumers are in charge, and 85% of their decision-making is subconscious, you need to understand how to tap into the subconscious drivers behind your consumer personality types so that you resonate with them. For example, not all personality types use social media or shop using the internet or mobile. You can implement a more operationally sound brand strategy if you understand the best channel mix to communicate with your personality types as well as how they react and interact with such details as store design; packaging; colours, shapes and textures; price – it’s the thousand details which enable you to resonate with these target groups at a more subconscious level and connect with them emotionally. This approach is the missing link between understanding the real drivers of consumer behaviour, strategic branding and operational implications at the point of sale.” concludes Kuehn.
The Retail Doctor