This issue's keywords: shopper insights; social media; brand identity; mobile marketing
Paper coupons were used more than downloaded coupons (32 percent compared to 19 percent) and printed grocery ads were more popular than electronic versions (50 percent compared to 21 percent), according to findings from the Retail Feedback Group’s 2014 U.S. Supermarket Experience Study. The study found over three-quarters of shoppers use some type of money-saving approach, with traditional measures being more popular.
A majority of U.S. shoppers (54 percent) say that they like to grocery shop, compared to only 41 percent in 2011, according to research from Jacksonville, Fla., Acosta Sales and Marketing. Its newly-released report, The Why? Behind the Buy, details grocery shopping trends such as increased spending (likely due to inflation), the growth of snack foods over traditional meal products, a decline in frozen food purchases except with Millennials and Gen X shoppers, and an expansion of smartphone and tablet use in planning a shopping trip. The report was produced with a nationally representative random sample of U.S. shoppers from Acosta’s proprietary ShopperF1rst online survey in the spring of 2014.
A study by Y2 Analytics, a Salt Lake City researcher, found that more brand advocates are motivated by the opportunity to share their passion for a product and by helping others (66 percent) than those who are motivated by compensation by money or samples (28 percent). Brand advocates were defined as people talking about their favorite products and brands on their social networks and in real life. The study selected participants based on their expertise, familiarity, loyalty and active promotion of a product, as well as purchasing influence. The average advocate was found to be employed full time, 45 years or younger, highly educated and media savvy. Needle, the Salt Lake City firm that commissioned the study, estimates that there are around 37.5 million advocate candidates in the U.S.
In a survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers by Contact Solutions, a Washington, D.C., marketing firm, 17 percent said they experience problems with mobile shopping apps at least half the time and 38 percent are frustrated at their inability to access help within an app. When having problems, more than half will abandon their shopping carts and 20 percent said they will stop using the app completely. Almost all of the consumers (92 percent) said that customer care within an app would be helpful. Of the 1,000 consumers, 75 percent shop online, with 30 percent using a mobile device as much as a desktop computer.
Twitter, San Francisco, is donating $10 million over the next five years to form the Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), a new division of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, Cambridge, Mass. The LSM is aimed at exploring how people use social media networks and will develop new technologies to find patterns across public mass media, social media, data streams and digital content and to develop methodology for individuals and institutions to identify, discuss and act on societal problems. The LSM will have access to Twitter’s real-time public stream of tweets and all archived tweets. It will be led by Deb Roy, Twitter’s chief media scientist and an associate professor at the Media Lab.
These reports were compiled from recent issues of the Daily News Queue, a free e-newsletter digest of marketing research and insights news and information delivered each business morning. Not already in the Queue? Sign up here!Â