Back to school means Back-to-School sales. It seems like we’re seeing these sales earlier each year, almost right after the kids get out of school for the summer.
As the advertising kicks in, the intended audience sometimes is missed because the consumer is rarely ever the shopper.
The consumer is the grade schooler, the tweener, or the teenager, needing everything from brand new pencils and rulers to new iPhones and laptops. The shopper is almost always Mom. With credit card in hand (it used to be a checkbook, when I was a kid), she hits the stores ready to find the perfect tools for her child’s education, as long as it fits perfectly within the budget.
Due to the comfort of repurposing content, this audience factor may not be considered when using digital signage to support a campaign like Back-to-School. The student will see how cool it is to get a new gadget or notebook, but it may not resonate with Mom because she’s focused on saving a few dollars.
While we know that the audience mindset is different and the demographic targets are more refined, what becomes apparent is that the consumer is not the shopper.
The purchase decision often starts outside the store, but may start with the child. And while she may want that sweet-looking backpack, it’s Mom who is doing the purchasing. Mom may be going up and down the aisles, trying her best to set aside her judgement of what her child should wear while still favoring a cost-effective way to help her child look cool. At some point, the message has to shift focus from the consumer to the shopper.
In the May/June 2009 issue of The Hub, Joan Chow, Executive Vice President of ConAgra Foods, provided insight into how her teams understand the similarities and differences between the consumer and the shopper:
“The shopper insights folks connect very closely with the consumer insights folks, but they look at the insights from both the retailer’s and the shopper’s perspectives. For example, the Slim Jim consumer is typically a young teenage boy, but the Slim Jim shopper, depends on the store. If it’s a convenience store, the shopper is the teenage boy, but if it’s a grocery store, it could be his mom. So, we want to understand her perspective when she goes into the store: What’s the appropriate message that’s going to resonate with her? Where should we be placing Slim Jim in the store? That’s where shopper insights really come into play.”
This type of shopper insight reveals that the proposition for a brand or product must be different depending on four factors: The consumer, the shopper, the retailer, and the location in the store.
Does your shopper insight go that deep? It should. It could mean the difference between pencils and Slim Jims.
Dave Haynes is one of the most experienced people in the still-nascent digital signage industry. He has held senior management and business development positions with some of the biggest names in the industry. He’s also well-known and respected as one of the most widely-read industry authorities through his blogs, Sixteen:Nine and Buzz, Not Buzzwords.This is the second time around for Dave as new media pioneer, having been one of the first large daily newspaper editors in North America to put his paper online. Haynes brings a strong technical and operational perspective on the industry, as well as communications skills developed over 20 years working in print journalism. 
