1. As seen in
p2pi.org
Best Practices in
SHOPPER MARKETING MEASUREMENT
Part 3:
Measuring
Brand Impact
Underwritten by:
By Liz Crawford, Senior Industry Analyst
Executive Summary
The following is the third installment in a six-part series examining
best practices for the measurement of shopper marketing. This n Traditional brand equity studies often are too broad, and too in-
frequent, to identify the impact of an individual shopper program.
article looks at effective ways to measure brand impact. Subsequent
n To date, most pre/post-shop interview questions don’t tie
articles will cover effective integration practices, retail collaboration back to an established set of brand equity questions such as
and directions for the future. To read the first two articles in the those benchmarked in a year-over-year study.
series, visit www.p2pi.org. n Diet Pepsi tied results from its “Skinny Can” program at a
key retailer to longitudinal brand equity scores to definitively
F
or big brands, measuring the “masculine,” “nurturing”). However, demonstrate impact. However meritorious, this approach
would be cost prohibitive for most programs and brands.
impact of shopper marketing these tracker studies are typically too
on brand equity is a big deal. broad, and too infrequent, to gauge n Continually updated brand dashboards have become com-
mon practice. While these tools don’t report the impact on
Bryan Welsh, vice president of the impact of a given program. Shop-
brand equity of a specific shopper program, they help keep
shopper marketing at PepsiCo, puts per marketers, therefore, have been a finger on the brand’s pulse.
it this way: “How drinkers feel about left searching for their own solutions.
n To understand the effect of a particular program, pre/post-
Diet Pepsi is as important an issue as Understanding the impact of shop- shop interviews are overlaid on quantitative shopper mea-
trial or awareness.” The sheer size of per marketing programs on brand eq- surements, such as shopper card data. Interviews can reveal a
the potential in-store audience – up- uity is possible, but the findings are shopper’s pre-store purchase intent and post-trip impressions.
ward of 140 million weekly shoppers neither cheap nor easy to obtain. The n Most current methodologies employ researchers to conduct
at Walmart alone – qualifies the retail reason is that the sample size needs in-aisle observations and interviews to be overlaid onto sales
environment as a discrete media chan- to be robust, over a brief executional data. This approach has merit, because it is recording real-
nel, and the conviction that brand eq- time frame, to read a single cam- world behavior across retailers during program execution.
uity can be enhanced in-store is a key paign at a specific retailer. That can n An emerging technique arms shoppers with mobile devices to
tenet of shopper marketing. be dauntingly expensive, especially record their purchases and self-administer interviews. Emerging
Historically, understanding brand when compared with the overall cost mobile apps facilitate a limited number of survey questions on
health has been the brand manager’s of the program. top of captured shopper card and in-store behavior data. The
questions can be used to help determine shopper attitudes
bailiwick. It is standard practice to con- Furthermore, program measure-
about brands after exposure to marketing communication.
tinually track various equity measures ment can be slippery or error-prone,
n Sales data is starting to be linked to digital media consump-
such as awareness, likability and fu- because marketing execution and
tion. This connection needs only a qualitative dimension to
ture purchase intent, as well as spe- retail conditions vary widely from significantly propel understanding forward.
cific brand imagery dimensions (“hip,” store to store. Working under various
© Copyright 2012. Path to Purchase Institute, Inc., Skokie, Illinois U.S.A. All rights reserved under both international and Pan-American copyright conventions. No reproduction
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1

2. SPECIAL REPORT
The Skinny on Diet Pepsi
During Fashion Week 2011, PepsiCo reintroduced presenting a fashion
Diet Pepsi to the Millennial generation by launching model posing with
a new “Skinny Can,” a slimmer, taller 12-ounce pack- the product.
age whose sleek design was developed to sit along- Diet Pepsi’s brand
side Diet Pepsi’s traditional packaging on shelf. equity was measured
An account-specific program at Target urged shop- through pre/post-
pers to “Get the Skinny” through branded endcaps shop interviews with
and a cross-merch promo dangling $3 off the com- Target “guests” (via
bined purchase of a four-pack and People. An ad Millward Brown’s panel). The brand enjoyed a sig-
in the Time Inc. magazine touted the offer while nificant positive lift from the effort.
constraints, shopper marketers try to maintain is a high level of brand awareness and sports Approaches and Tools
the brand experience – and the research con- involvement. Conversely, the gatekeeper in The “Skinny Can” case is notable because the
ditions – across retailers and stores, but that’s grocery is ‘shopper mom,’ who isn’t familiar goal centered on brand equity. The measure-
not an easy task. with the sports celebrities. She doesn’t care. ment tool was Millward Brown’s brand equity
Finally, there is the halo issue: What is the The messages geared to the sports drink con- survey, which regularly polls thousands of con-
impact of the retailer on the brand? The retail sumer would be lost in that environment.” sumers to gauge their perceptions of various
context can have a definite effect on the shop- brands. The New York-based research house
per’s impression. For example, brands might Q. In retail environments, how do you conducts these annual studies for many CPGs
seem snazzier at Target or fresher at Whole measure the effect of shopper market- on a national basis; this is a longitudinal ap-
Foods. Measuring this effect on brand equity ing on brand equity? proach that is not typically applied to shopper
is sometimes discussed but rarely pursued with Welsh: “It’s possible, but pricey. The regular marketing campaigns.
testing. metrics don’t get all the way to bright. Everyone To effectively use the tool to measure ac-
across disciplines leans on the same metrics. count-level impact, PepsiCo oversampled for
The ‘Skinny’ from PepsiCo As an industry, we tend to rely on sales lift – shoppers at a key retailer in a separate study
The following Q&A with PepsiCo’s Welsh whether or not that was the primary objective.” before the “Skinny Can” program launched
illustrates how manufacturers are thinking “[For instance,] the goal in launching the Diet to calibrate the brand equity scores there to
about building brand equity through shopper Pepsi skinny pack was to change the perception the brand’s national scores. The resulting data
marketing: of the brand (see sidebar). The sales lift was ter- served as benchmarks to gauge the program’s
rific, but incidental. We did a deep dive on mea- success as determined through a post-shop
Q. How does PepsiCo view brand suring changes in perception, but it was expen- survey. The results identified a statistically sig-
communication at retail? sive. It doesn’t make sense to do this every time. nificant increase in brand equity.
Welsh: “We think of the store as a medium “That’s why there are three main buckets of However, the PepsiCo case was rare in that
to drive a brand message. In some cases, the measurement. The first is lift and volume. The its “deep dive” into brand perceptions at the
retailer (where the products are showcased) second is behavioral – for example, how often key retailer was statistically married to national
is the message and vice versa. A brand mes- am I buying and what else is in the basket? brand equity measures. Since this luxury is not
sage geared to appeal to Gen X females and The third is brand equity. This includes all pre/ available for many brands or programs, a brief
their sense of style would be very powerful in post-shop questions around how shoppers feel overview of brand equity approaches and tools
Target. But the same message may not work about the brand, in the context of that retailer.” is warranted.
in a different environment, such
as a traditional grocer. The brand
communication needs to enhance
the shopping experience, and vice
versa. For instance, Dollar General
isn’t looking for Diet Pepsi to play
“The goal in launching the Diet
the role of trendsetter. Instead, it is
more [interested in] value on packs
Pepsi skinny pack was to change
the shopper is familiar with.”
the perception of the brand.
Q. So it’s about the shopper in
a particular environment?
The sales lift was terrific, but
Welsh: “Right. In the sports drink
category, the shopper and consum-
incidental.”
er aren’t [always] the same person.
In convenience stores, the product Bryan Welsh, vice president of shopper marketing, PepsiCo
is bought by the consumer. There
2

3. SPECIAL REPORT
Sample Dashboard for Measuring Brand Health
Hard Measures Soft Measures
n Dollars and unit volume n Brand awareness
n Average weekly ACV (all commodities volume) n Brand consideration/purchase intent
n Percentage base and incremental units n Brand usage
n Merchandising compliance (audits) n Custom brand perceptions/equity (likability,
“brand for me” gauges, imagery)
n Weeks of merchandising support
n Channel/retailer preferences
n Average unit price/promoted price
n Tangible product strengths/weaknesses
n Household penetration
n Social media preferences
n Purchase frequency
n Selection/de-selection criteria
n Loyalty (share of requirements)
n Promotional preferences
n Total points of distribution
n Perception of competing brands
n Dollars per point of distribution
n Percentage shopper conversion
Sources: Various
The 50,000 Foot View: Dashboards program from national panel data is not practi- specifically. If the store is treated as another
Keeping regularly updated dashboards has be- cal. Most programs are too granular to be cap- media channel, then the “shopper” can be
come common practice in the industry. A dash- tured by national samples – one researcher es- considered as passing the same gates as the
board is a business intelligence visualization timated that it would take 10 times the typical television “viewer.”
of up-to-date metrics and key performance national sample size to read a specific retailer Using this concept, TNS breaks in-store
indicators (KPIs). While most dashboards report program. Moreover, short-duration programs brand impact into four stages: Exposure,
brand health statistics at much higher levels are missed on national surveys because they’re Breakthrough, Desire and Action, each with
than a specific shopper program, the practice is in and out of the market too quickly to be its own measurement techniques and metrics.
a good way to keep a finger on the pulse of the recorded. Unless a brand increases the sample Exposure can include various “opportunity to
brand – sales, shopper behavior, and equity. size among the retailers in question (like Diet see” measures, such as awareness (gleaned
The chart above is a sample dashboard Pepsi did), the equity impact of a single pro- through pre/post-shop interviews), pass-by
culled from several industry sources. (Acosta gram can’t be read. And for most programs, rates (shopping cart tracking) or even mer-
Sales and Marketing, Jacksonville, Fla., is one doing so would be prohibitively expensive. chandising compliance (store audits).
practitioner that parses metrics into hard and So, to understand the effect of a particular The measurements associated with Break-
soft measures.) Creating a robust picture of program, pre/post-shop interviews are usually through include main message recall (pre/post
brand health and shopper impact, as well as overlaid onto shopper card data such as brand- interviews), stopping power (eye-tracking)
reconciling data points, is the goal. switching patterns or trial numbers. Interviews and dwell time (video tracking). Desire would
Performance data naturally falls into two can reveal a shopper’s pre-store purchase in- include purchase intent (pre/post interviews)
categories: fast-moving and slow-moving. Ac- tent and what she remembered from her trip. and brand imagery measures. Finally, Action
cording to Agustin De Dios, director of global Studying this is important, because there are involves conversion (video monitoring) and
measurement analytics at Kimberly-Clark, a variety of possible impressions at play, from sales (POS data).
“The challenge is to link the slow-moving full-on brand immersion to phantom effects. It should be noted that any techniques re-
data and analytics (such as loyalty and panel Brand immersion experiences – a Super Bowl quiring central location testing and not in-mar-
data, and MMM) with the fast-moving data spectacular or a product demonstration – are ket, such as virtual or mock stores, are better
(various digital activities). Fast-moving data, achievable in-store. Such efforts can make a used to refine a program before launch, not to
such as ‘Likes,’ click-throughs and visitors, can measurable impression on the shopper. On gauge in-market performance.
be downloaded as often as hourly. It would the flipside are phantom effects: In one study,
be interesting to discover if the fast-moving research firm TNS, Portland, Ore., found that Full Scale In-Market Interviews
data could predict the slow-moving data.” more than 20% of shoppers recalled branded For the biggest programs, it is essential to tie in-
Such reconciliation of data points and proof elements that did not exist. store brand perceptions to in-market purchase
of correlative relationships among data sets Most brands monitor sales and brand per- behavior. SmartRevenue, Stamford, Conn.,
is a continuing challenge for analytics teams. ception on a national basis, and many are employs hundreds of researchers to conduct
doing so for their largest shopper programs, in-aisle observations and interviews, which are
Sales Analytics Overlays too. However, it is possible to deconstruct the overlaid onto sales data. This approach has
Reading the impact of a shopper marketing impact of in-store brand communication more merit because it records real-world behavior,
3

4. SPECIAL REPORT
across retailers, during program execution. Incorporating Digital Components brand marketers have viewed in-store pro-
An emerging technique employs a panel of While the pre/post-shop interview approach grams as potentially eroding brand equity.
shoppers armed with software on their smart- offers robust brand insight, elements can be More enlightened marketers, however, con-
phones who record their purchases and self- left out. What about digital shopper market- sider this only true in the case of straightfor-
administer questionnaires. This methodology ing? Increasingly, digital communication is ward price reductions.
eliminates the expense of hiring researchers overlapping with in-store marketing because Ultimately, the future should bring addi-
to conduct interviews in-aisle. It also captures both deliver shopper interaction. Digital and tional ways to more easily measure the im-
attitudes and behavior across channels and especially mobile media are proving to be a pact of shopper programs on brand equity.
throughout the purchase cycle. (MESH Plan- natural companion to shopping. But the use of The demand for these measures is rising, as
ning, headquartered in London, is a leader in new media in-store adds an interesting wrinkle shopper programming becomes increasingly
this area.) However, the shoppers themselves to measuring impact. entrenched and sophisticated. At the same
are responsible for quality assurance, which One company that measures this impact is time, technology is opening newer, faster
may result in uneven levels of reporting and Dynamic Logic, New York, whose AdIndex ties and cheaper avenues to track individual
could affect results. together qualitative and quantitative program shoppers.
In a similar vein, Modiv Media and Ahold results while incorporating the effect of digital
USA’s Stop & Shop are bringing the capabili- messaging. Here’s how it works: Online ex-
ties of a handheld scanner to the shopper’s posure to a campaign is tracked using cookie
smartphone. Users of the retailer’s Scan It! app technology, and a survey is administered. This
must first register their loyalty cards, which information is then tied to shopper card data About the Author
means that full, historical shopper information at a specific retailer. Control and exposed test
is captured. The app can deliver promotional cells are used. The output provides branding
offers, as well as record the shopper’s in-aisle and ROI metrics in one deliverable. This tech-
location, thereby adding behavioral data to nique could be used to measure the brand
shopper card data. It also allows for a limited impact of banner ads or a product showcase
number of closed-end survey questions to be on a retailer’s site.
self-administered during the shop, permitting
some brand equity measures to be taken. The Deeper Issues and Disconnects
app also can tie pre-shop lists to a specific Most researchers use the term “brand equity”
retailer’s shopper card data, and to attitude fairly loosely, especially in the context of shop-
data, for a participating retailer, functioning per marketing studies. One analytics profes-
like a self-administered shopalong. sional explained that, “We deliberately call
If these kinds of apps proliferate, the result- these ‘brand perception’ measures, rather than
ing data could become very valuable. How- brand equity,” and with good reason: most
Liz Crawford has more than 20 years
ever, retailers will own the data, potentially pre/post interviews do not tie back to an es-
of brand management and consulting
limiting its availability to brand marketers, and tablished set of brand equity questions (as Diet
experience with a concentration in
the same quality assurance issues noted above Pepsi’s study did). This creates an interesting
might apply. disconnect. Why wouldn’t every pre/post in-
strategic innovation. Over the last
terview have the same brand equity questions few years, Crawford has focused
asked in the annual benchmarked tracker? on developing integrated shopper
marketing strategies for Fortune 500
Series Schedule Part of the reason is that marketers sim-
ply want other questions answered during a clients. Currently, Crawford is an
necessarily short interview window. What’s analyst and contributing writer for the
Part 1: Rationalizing the more, “Buyers can be promiscuous in-store, Path to Purchase Institute. McGraw-
Investment regardless of their brand affiliation. So the Hill released her book, “The Shopper
brand equity measure for any given shopper Economy,” in March.
Part 2: Measurement of may or may not indicate their inclination at
Shopper Behavior the point of sale,” according to Ken Feather-
ston, vice president-planning for OgilvyAction,
JWT/OgilvyAction Inc., conducting busi-
Part 3: Measurement of Brand Chicago. “Perhaps a more relevant question
ness under the OgilvyAction and JWT Ac-
Impact is, ‘How can we plan and account for shop-
tion brands, is a fully integrated, end-to-
pers who make decisions against their brand
end shopper marketing and experiential
Part 4: Effective Integration affinities?’ ”
marketing agency with main offices in
Featherston’s group is beginning to develop
Practices brand preference benchmarks to help bridge
New York, Chicago and Akron, Ohio. It is
part of the WPP Group.
this gap for clients. OglivyAction’s core ques-
Part 5: Retail Collaboration tions focus on share of mind and category
decision sets, pre- and post-shop.
Part 6: Directions for the There is another, little discussed reason to
Future avoid asking brand equity questions during
pre/post-shop interviews: Historically, many
4