In-Store Promotions — What Attributes Maximize Awareness and Sales

The Business Issue

Our client wanted to better understand ROI on in-store promotional efforts with specific insights around promotion recall, appeal and impact across key retail formats and among individual consumer groups to answer "what types of in-store promotions are most effective?"

The Background

Our client spends tens of millions of dollars on development of in-store promotional materials and many millions more at retail for placement and location incentives. Despite these expenditures, outside of sales data (which can be influenced by many variables), our client has little information on in-store effectiveness in generating awareness and converting shoppers to buyers. Additionally, they are looking to benchmark their own in-store promotions vs. similar products as well as CPG-leadership companies.

The Solution

The RI team targeted recent shoppers across multiple channels with intent to understand key in-store promotional metrics, specifically:

• Promotion type
• Appeal, including drivers and barriers
• Unaided and aided promotion awareness
• Recall and brand linkage
• Impact on purchase behavior
• Impact on future purchase intent

The intent was to provide learning by account/channel and consumer groups as opposed to typical approach of spreading "same promotion type" across all channels and shopper groups.

The Business Value

Through this study, the RI team delivered the following analysis on in-store promotions:

• The majority of respondents recall at least one in-store promotion from their most recent shopping trip (past 3 days)
• Half of all promotions were linked to a specific brand by consumers
• By a wide margin, seasonal (or thematic) promotions are the most frequently recalled by shoppers
• 36% of all recalled promotions were associated with a purchase - this is consistent across retail formats and consumer groups
• Promotion appeal is driven primarily by eye-catching displays while lack of product relevance and dull displays drive negative ratings
• Overall, 55% of in-store promotions directly influence brand purchase decision

Our findings provided the foundation on the most impactful drivers of promotions as well as response by various retail channels. Upon learning the results, the client plans on tailoring future in-store promotions to reflect these findings in order to maximize ROI and convert new shoppers to buyers.