The science behind the fashion for multichannel shopping

Diana Cawley, managing director of Arc, the brand activation arm of the Leo Burnett Group, says brands need to ensure they tailor their offering to maximise the multi-channel opportunity…

It goes without saying that the shopping experience has evolved. The consumer journey no longer simply ends, or begins in-store. Consumers increasingly engage with brands through multiple touch points – from a burgeoning online offering, to new routes like mobile.

Multichannel shopping behaviour is ubiquitous and highly complex. It has changed the way that we shop and this new environment has created fascinating new consumer behaviours. To understand this trend better we at Arc, the brand activation arm of the Leo Burnett Group, undertook the largest study of its kind, polling almost 6,000 consumers across the UK, US and France, to delve deeper into multichannel shopping behaviour. We wanted to understand what was driving this change, and what these changes meant for those brands, retailers and marketers competing in today’s modern landscape.

Our research confirmed that almost everybody is a Multichannel shopper. Even the most loyal ‘Saturday shopper’ will deviate from the store environment – with 86% of respondents using two or more shopping channels to search for, and ultimately purchase products.

However, while consumers are browsing more than ever before, this does not correlate to consumer spend. The multichannel shopper spends much the same amount in total as the single channel shopper but does so across a greater number of channels.

As you might expect, consumers browse more when they feel they have more to lose financially. The higher the perceived risk in a purchase, the more likely a shopper is to use multiple channels as part of their shopping ‘journey’.

Motivations for multichannel shopping can also vary widely. Our research revealed a broad range of useful ‘shopper archetypes’, which can be grouped in terms of their attitudes to multichannel shopping. These shopper ‘types’ were identified as:

• ‘Strategic Savers’ – conduct extensive research, with a big emphasis on finding the best price
• ‘Pound Ponderers’ – disengaged and use price to make quick brand decisions
• ‘Quality Devotees’ – focus on quality and are loyal to the brands that deliver it
• ‘Savvy Passionistas’ – trend setters who enjoy shopping, and have emotional connections to the shopping experience
• ‘Opportunistic Adventurers’ – love to shop and enjoy the thrill of hunting for bargains and great deals
• ‘Efficient Sprinters’ – don’t enjoy the shopping process, and just want to get their needed shopping over and done with

Interestingly, the country of origin, also had a bearing on the prevalence of multichannel shopper ‘types’. For example, the strongly price driven archetypes – i.e. ‘Pound ponderers’ and Strategic Savers – are substantially more heavily represented in the US (39%) than in the UK (25%) and France (19%). Whilst the more quality and experience orientated multichannel shoppers – so-called Savvy Passionistas and Quality Devotees – are far more heavily represented in France (63%) than in the US (32%) and UK (39%).

This research provides invaluable insight into the way that brand and retailers must now engage with shoppers across their path to purchase. With today’s consumer using a multitude of channels to search for information and make purchases, they are often dipping in and out of channels on their buying journey. This means that now, more than ever, brands need to ensure consistency in messaging. This doesn’t mean that they must provide the same experience at every touch point, instead, marketing ideas must play to the strengths of the channel.

While multichannel shopping has never been more fashionable, this does not signal the death of the traditional physical store. Our research shows that today’s multichannel shopper still values the physical store as a key component in the path to purchase. While today’s consumer may be a fickle character, what is clear, is that whether in store, online or mobile, brands need to understand that consumers encounter various touch-points, put in place by retailers adopting new ways to communicate with shoppers. Brands need to ensure that they play to this and tailor their offering to maximise the multi-channel opportunity.