Consumers being wooed by product manufacturers in grocery, discount, club and convenience stores usually arrive with a good idea of what they intend to buy, but can be persuaded to change their minds because of the many influencers at point of purchase.

A recent study by San Francisco-based MarketTools found that 75 percent of consumers prefer to shop at just one or two stores on a regular basis, and 85 percent generally shop with a written or “mental” list. But a separate survey shows that brand loyalty doesn’t prevent many shoppers from choosing something else at the last minute.

These survey results underscore the remarkable impact that in-store marketing tactics can have on consumers’ purchasing behavior — everything from new product programs to packaging design, display timing, coupons, shelf-talkers and POP materials.

The dramatic effects these programs have on consumers drove MarketTools to develop a system to test consumers’ in-store decision-making by means of a “virtual” shopping environment in which a host of variables are carefully controlled.

“We executed four virtual and [traditional] controlled store tests with real stores, people and fixtures in a variety of different circumstances,” says Valla Roth, vice president of research solutions marketing for MarketTools. “In all four cases the data lined up very well, which gave us the confidence to tell our clients they can save time and money on this research and still get the precision.”

Actual costs of virtual testing are “less than a quarter” of traditional testing, Roth says, and the typical sample of 500 people is drawn from MarketTools’ online community of 2.5 million panelists.

The virtual store visit is conducted from each member’s computer; it brings them to a “fly through” of the front of the store and down the aisles designated for testing. Each panelist is asked to make shopping decisions based on a realistic, carefully controlled depiction of the environment, complete with high-resolution graphics of packaging, shelf talkers, coupon machines, signage and other POP elements.

The testing often elicits surprising findings: Roth notes recent research in which a client wanted to implement a racking system in a large category.

“We tested it virtually,” she says. “We shopped the category un-racked and with the racking in place. We found that the racking system made it more difficult to shop because consumers couldn’t discern the various products.

“The racking became an impediment and [would have] caused a decline in sales,” she says.

In another case, a company was debating whether to place a new household product alongside its direct competitors or with other products in its brand family. “This kind of research would have been difficult to do with traditional testing,” Roth says, “but with virtual testing we found it more advantageous to have the new product next to its direct competitor. They also found that pricing it higher was more advantageous because it imparted a message of higher quality.”

More detailed results
The virtual research method produces more detailed, useful findings than traditional in-store programs, Roth says, “because we know, in a virtual sense, who everybody is. We can drill down and understand why this version [of a product] will sell more and determine if we are bringing in new users or rewarding current users and encouraging them to stock up.”

Fundamental to this new research capability is its potential to bring timely and accurate findings within the reach of many more product manufacturers and retailers because of its lower cost.