60% can’t wait
Written by Lawrence Johnson | August 4, 2008
A new Ogilvy Action study revealed that 40% of consumers wait until they are in the store to decide what brand to buy.
The study, as reported by Advertising Age, further revealed that 10% of consumers change their minds about brands at the store, 29% buy from categories they did not intend to buy from, and 20% leave a product they had planned to buy on the shelf.
These results debunks the accepted 70% rule that colored marketing strategy for more than a decade. Sampling and product display were factors cited by shoppers as having impact on their decision. And these factors ranked ahead of price
In spite of this trend major brands such as P&G are shifting budgets towards in-store communication. The article suggests that the study “does not answer the age-old question of the extent to which advertising outside the store untimely influences purchase decisions consciously or unconsciously”. While this is certainly the holy grail of marketing, the AA reporter overlooked a plethora of studies that have shed light on this question. For instance an eMarketer sponsored study on cross channel shopping behavior revealed, among other things, that 60% of shoppers bought in store after receiving a coupon, and 37% browsed the internet and then bought in store. Now all of this is starting to make a lot of sense.
