November 20, 2009
KNOXVILLE, TN — A group of top executives from some of the nation’s leading companies — including PepsiCo Americas Foods, Wal-Mart, Nestlé, Kimberly-Clark and The Walt Disney Co. — gathered at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to help the College of Business Administration launch its inaugural Shopper Marketing Forum.
“It is the hottest issue in retail and consumer package goods,” said forum organizer Dan Flint, UT’s Proffitt’s Inc. Associate Professor of Marketing. “Few other universities are paying serious attention to it — so far.”
“Shopper marketing” is understanding how one’s target consumers behave as shoppers and leveraging this intelligence to benefit the company or brand, consumers, retailers and shoppers,” said forum organizer Dan Flint, UT’s Proffitt’s Inc. Associate Professor of Marketing. “The way shoppers are influenced by signage, coupons, packaging, in-store radio, promotions, etc. —all of this is shopper marketing. It is the strategy of engaging consumers while they are in the ‘shopping mode’ to build brand equity and persuade them to make purchases.”
Some of the issues explored at the forum included collaboration among supply chain partners in retail; improved metrics and return on investment (ROI) for marketing initiatives; gaining deeper insights into shopper thinking, behavior and value perceptions; and enhancing shopper experiences through state-of-the-art technology such as social networking and virtual simulations and displays.
The economic downturn, coupled with changes in shoppers’ behavior and attitudes, has forced companies to think about new ways to entice customers to buy their products, Flint said. For instance, he said, research shows that, 70 percent of the time, shoppers choose what brand to buy while they are shopping; eight percent of buying decisions are unplanned; and only five percent of customers are loyal to the brand of one product group.
Flint said that some of the participants in the inaugural Shopper Marketing Forum — including Pepsico/Fritolay, CROSSMARK, Anderson Companies, Pilot, and Mars Advertising — are becoming annual sponsors of the forum. (For additional information about the forum, visit http://bus.utk.edu/smf/ or contact Flint at dflint@utk.edu.)
