Lightsabers and digital lassos

Editor's note: Sarah Gleason is senior vice president of shopper and retail strategy at research firm GfK. Christina Pate is senior research director of digital experiences at GfK.

Classical journey tales – of war heroes, villains and spiritual seekers – are defined partly by the tools available to the travelers. Jason had his Argo, Luke Skywalker his lightsaber and Wonder Woman her Lasso of Truth. These objects in many ways shape our heroes’ stories through their capabilities, as well as their limitations.

Fast-forward to a galaxy far, far away, where thousands of anxious observers (known as brands, publishers, agencies and others) are trying to understand the story of a single protagonist: the omnichannel shopper. Consumers through the ages have shared many characteristics: a thirst for bargains, a passion for performance and a keen ear for the opinions and preferences of others.

But today’s shopper is armed with a tool that few ancient mariners or warriors might have imagined: the smartphone.

Remade the retail marketplace

Computers connected to the Internet began to upend the retail world more than 20 years ago; algorithms and cookies have allowed digital advertisers to target people shopping for cars, shoes or insurance. But the smartphone has truly remade the retail marketplace and is redefining the purchase process for generations of consumers to come.

In GfK’s FutureBuy research, 35 percent of all U.S. shoppers now say they rely on a combination of in-person store visits and online resources to make purchases across 16 product groups – with the proportion for high-involvement categories like electronics rising above 50 percent. One in five U.S. shoppers reports seeing an item in a store and then buying it from another vendor online, a process known as showrooming. And those who showroom say they are doing it more often – 40 percent report a frequency of once a week or more, up from 25 percent just a year ago.

On the flip side, we have the phenomenon known as Webrooming, in which the final purchase is made in a store after consulting both in-person and online resources. Overall, Webrooming  –  reported by one-third (34 percent) of all U.S. shoppers  –  is now more common than showrooming (21 percent of U.S. shoppers).

We also know that the next generation of shoppers  –  today’s Gen Z (ages 18 to 26)  –  spends roughly one-quarter (24 percent) of its online shopping time using a mobile phone, compared to less than one-tenth (3 percent) for Baby Boomers (ages 52 to 70).

For brands trying to understand how shoppers travel from an unmet need through purchase research to a final buying decision, the sources of confusion and cross-talk have become almost unlimited. In addition to “traditional” media, the many online platforms  –  from shopping apps to social media to brand-hosted Web sites  –  have made every shopping trip from Point A to Point Z much more complex.

On the other hand, smartphones also offer a wealth of data about their users, from locations to Web sites visited to social media activity. When harnessed and interpreted properly, this rich information – in combination with custom, survey-based insights – can help marketers understand purchase journeys with a precision never imagined before. But, as with most other online data, there are roadblocks. There are technological and privacy hurdles – and researchers also face the challenge of analyzing and identifying relevant touchpoints in big data sets that can contain millions of Web site and app visits.

If we can conquer the obstacles, we have the chance to draw on all of our resources to describe and even predict purchase journeys in ways we could never have hoped to before – even taking into account the complications posed by an omnishopper’s twisted path to purchase.

“Understanding the time consumers spend researching, the sites used for comparison shopping and the keywords used for searching is fairly easy to determine for our customers,” says Rob Johnson, director of digital and channel research for Marriott International. “However, we did not have a direct comparison map of what consumers are doing on competitive sites and mobile apps. To answer this question, we have utilized passive tracking [such as GfK offers on KnowledgePanel Digital] to inform our competitive analysis and our customer acquisition strategies.”

Relied on recollections

In the past, purchase-journey studies relied on surveys exclusively – capturing shoppers’ recollections of what they did and when. These surveys provide a solid picture of what a consumer/shopper has done in terms of the broad-brush pathways, influencers encountered along the way and the final decision. But as these journeys have grown more fragmented, with in-person and online shopping intermingled, the likelihood of recalling what went on in each step is limited. In a recent study for a retail client, we collected both passive and survey data for the same data point: how many mobile touchpoints shoppers made on an average purchase journey. While the self-reported data indicated just four visits, on average, the passive showed 48 – a massive difference.

We find that shoppers can usually remember the apps and Web sites they relied on most but being able to recall individual visits and correctly summing them is (quite understandably) beyond the average person’s ability. This is why we feel that, in creating a 21st-century purchase journey story, remaining data-agnostic is essential. Surveys can illuminate big-picture activities and deliver insight and emotional color that illuminates both the what and the why people consult the resources they do or make the purchase decisions they finally put into action. This information can now be supplemented with activity data from the shopper’s new weapon of choice, the smartphone; these “digital lassos” basically act like extensions of consumers’ own probing brains, allowing them to perform tasks and provide answers in seconds – and revealing a great deal about how shoppers think from the footprints they leave.

We feel client and consumer alike are much better served by tapping volumetric information – site visits, purchases and coupon use – from passive sources. POS tracking studies, customer loyalty card data and smartphone use information from controlled panels are powerful information sources that the journey “master” can turn to. Rather than an author, per se, the new purchase journey creator is a curator of diverse plots and information that can be woven together to tell an invaluable story – how a purchase gets made.

Serve a number of needs

The new “omnidata” purchase journey study can serve a number of needs in the digital marketplace. Recently, a major consumer service brand that had recently been acquired by another needed to know the digital behavior of loyalty members for both the acquiring and acquired brands. To answer this need, we were able to leverage a combination of: passive data on site visits and search engine use from select KnowledgePanel Digital members – adults who own a smartphone or tablet who have agreed to let GfK track their digital behavior; user experience (UX) studies on the apps and sites in question; and focus groups to catch personal observations from loyalty members.

Analysis of the passive data revealed that members of the acquired brand’s loyalty program turned to aggregator sites in the category more than to the brand’s own digital resources. Similarly, customers of the acquiring brand were less likely to visit that firm’s apps than those of competitors; in fact, the average loyalty member visited over eight competitor Web sites – making insights into cross- and competitive-usage patterns key to driving repeat purchases.

Leveraging passive data shows just how intricate and sometimes unpredictable a purchase journey can be. Researchers can follow the navigational pathways that shoppers use in their searches – which sites came before and after. It turns out that consumers turn to different types of sites at different stages of the research process. One can even look at activity within the brands’ own sites, providing helpful insights on likely traffic patterns and potential sources of frustration.

Qual provided a much more robust dive into the why behind behaviors. Immersive online community sites, such as GfK’s Sociolog for example, allow researchers to, in some cases, observe what consumers do through the use of activity-based direction versus just answering questions (as in focus groups). The blogs are also a more projective technique.

UX research analyzed the features and benefits of each of the brands’ Web sites to provide insight into how to optimize the experience once members reach their Web site. In purchase journeys, UX can also offer a disciplined process for diving into the steps of the journey and arriving at additional mapping that complements passive data.

Reveal a different view

Another recent purchase journey story, developed for a major durable-goods retailer, combined Web browser and app activity with survey results to reveal a different view of the path to purchase. In all, consumers consulted over 40 digital shopping resources to arrive at their buying decisions; and most of their online shopping time was devoted to mobile devices. It turned out that while the retailer’s e-commerce site was receiving strong attention from consumers, its app was barely on shoppers’ radar, a major handicap to be analyzed and resolved. Analysis also revealed that Amazon.com and the Amazon app acted as de facto hubs for purchase research; shoppers would travel to another e-commerce or information site, return to Amazon, then venture out again.

Studies of browser activity also provided a great deal of insight; it turned out that two-thirds of browsing before visits to the retailer’s Web site was seemingly unrelated to the product search. And shoppers often used search engines just to find a retailer’s or brand’s own Web site – rather than simply typing in the URL. This kind of detailed data reveals not just micro-moments of impulsive ideas and actions but also larger moments of truth in the decisions to make major purchases. The new style of purchase journey study shows that the small and large moments intertwine, shaping each other in sometimes unpredictable ways.

To discern motivations for shopping and buying, we consulted the survey results, which revealed that “treating myself” was the most common reason for making a purchase from the retailer – a powerful insight into mind-sets of their customers and site users.

Almost always more complicated

By bringing a variety of insights and data to the task of telling the shopper’s purchase journey story, we learn that this quest is frequently epic and almost always more complicated than we might assume. Armed with just a smartphone, shoppers can travel to a host of “countries” – Web sites, apps and other resources – to collect clues and wise counsel, leading to the best decisions for their needs and budgets.

Understanding how these journeys really unfold, and what desires and needs lie behind them, requires artful data integration and interpretation. Today’s wealth of information is only truly valuable when spun into actions and next steps by a trained curator. With expert help, the everyday travels of average shoppers can provide essential guidance to the brands they may or may not be seeking.