High-value shoppers

High-value shoppers – they may be harder to win, but surely it’s worth the effort? If you ran a restaurant or a law firm, a garage or a dress shop, which customers would you care about most? It’s the loyal ones, right? The ones that spend the big money, who buy at full price. You would value the customer that comes to your business first for reasons other than a deal – service, your relationship, quality. It’s common business sense.

In packaged goods, however, when it comes to our shoppers we struggle to think that way. We are addicted to volume above all else. Any sale is a good sale, right? The end result is the majority of our thinking, time and money goes into promotion. The discount. The deal. We will often spend time doing anything to push that one extra sale through. We know in the back of our minds that this isn’t very profitable to do – never mind the problems it causes in our supply chain – but getting the facts to distinguish the temporary, expensive non-loyal purchase from the regular, full price oriented customer is incredibly difficult.

Our data shows time and again that if you simply split your shoppers by those buying a deal from a gondola end from those shopping the main fixture at full price; or split the planned shopper from the impulse shoppers; you find out some pretty powerful and basic truths.

For example, the earlier you get your brand into the consideration set, and the more you can attach your benefits to an occasion user or need, the more likely you are to win the full price purchase. The easier it is to find your brand, the faster the decision-making process, the fewer planned purchases you lose.

There is a simple conundrum here. The loyal, “intentional” shopper might be worth 4 times as much as the others, even more in a lifetime. But maybe it’s three times harder to work out how to get them and keep them. But isn’t it our duty to do so, or we keep sliding further and further down the bottomless pit of promotional selling?