Shopper Marketing Consulting: We find where your brand's sales are falling apart in the store
Your brand may have distribution, shelf space, and a trade budget, and still lose the sale in the aisle. We identify at what exact step of the buying process this happens and why, with field evidence, not assumptions.
The problem is almost never what it seems.
Decades of brand recognition, a well-developed product, established distribution, and the order placed. And yet, the brand doesn't sell in strategic stores. When that happens, the internal conversation revolves around price or lack of advertising, and the activation budget ends up solving a problem that doesn't exist.
Of the thirty shoppers who visit the category, five ask for their brand. The other twenty-five didn't buy it, and nobody knows what was going through their minds. That's the job.
Four ways to lose the sale at the point of purchase
Shopper doesn't buy the category
The shopper comes in, buys other things, and leaves without ever having visited your category. You never knew they were there.
The category is either outside the usual route, or it's behind the counter and you have to ask for it.
Shopper doesn't look at your brand
The shopper walks past the category without turning their head. For them, the product doesn't exist: it's out of sight, hidden by another brand, or competing against too much visual noise.
Takes your product and put it back
Shopper held it in the hand and put it back on the shelf. Went through the whole process and still said no.
Decision is taken by the staff
Ask for the category without mentioning the brand.
Why shopper marketing and not advertising?
Advertising speaks to millions of people, most of whom aren't going to buy that product today. The shopper in front of the shelf has already decided to buy; they're already there and they already have the money. They just need to choose which product. Influencing that person costs orders of magnitude less than creating an intention from scratch.
There's a second reason, and it's about negotiation. As retail consolidates, manufacturers lose their ability to dictate terms. The one thing a manufacturer can bring to the table that retailers can't achieve on their own is shopper understanding. It's no longer an analytical luxury; it's become a bargaining chip.
Why is asking the shopper the last thing we do?
Ask anyone why they took that route to work this morning. They'll give you a reason. But they didn't decide anything: they did what they always do, and they just created that reason for you.
Most purchases in traditional channels work the same way. They're automatic, completed in under ten seconds, and leave no record of deliberation because there was no deliberation. Asking "why" forces the shopper to reconstruct something that never happened. That's why a study based solely on statements yields ordered but incorrect answers.
Behavior is observed. Motives are questioned. Neither is sufficient on its own.
The three emotions that stop a purchase
Basic emotions manifest involuntarily in facial expressions and posture, before a person can even name them. A shopper's body language reveals more truth than words. In mass consumer goods, three emotions account for the majority of lost sales:
Disgust.
Sweaty or expired products, open packaging, dirty refrigerators, handling without gloves, unpleasant odors. This is the oldest emotion associated with food, and it can't be compensated for with price: a discount on a product that provokes rejection doesn't increase sales, it confirms it as a bad decision. And it penalizes the entire category in that store, not just its brand. It's also the only barrier that can be corrected the same day, without a budget and without anyone's permission.
Rage.
They came for something and it wasn't there, the line isn't moving, the shelf price isn't the price at the register. It's the only negative emotion that also presents an opportunity, when it's directed at a competitor. It costs more to win back an annoyed shopper than to gain a new one, and a negative experience isn't compensated for by a positive one: it takes several.
Fear.
Too many similar options with no clear criteria, unknown brands, buying for others where making a mistake has social, not just economic, consequences. It's the thrill of the trial bottleneck. What reduces this thrill isn't the price, it's certainty: visible information, references from others, or the word of the shopkeeper.
Five pieces, and each one answers a question.
The bottleneck of your brand
What's the problem?
The target shopper and their shopping mission
Who does this happen to?
The go-to store and what makes it different
What more can one gain?
The critical step in the buying process
Where the sale is lost
The barrier, with evidence
Why is it lost?
Everything we observe is recorded. We focus on the day and time with the highest volume in this category and record complete transactions with seven variables per person: the time, how they ordered, what the shopkeeper offered, what they bought, what they bought together, how long it took, and whether they hesitated. A mission with fewer than five observations is not a pattern, it's an anecdote.
Then the interviews are conducted, and not with just anyone. They interview those who demonstrated something: those who interacted with the product but didn't buy it, those who hesitated but bought it anyway, those who asked for an unbranded product and accepted what they were given. This is done using a protocol that neutralizes the four biases that ruin field data, starting with not mentioning the brand until the very end of the conversation.
And it all comes down to numbers. "Several said the brand is expensive" isn't a revelation. "Eleven out of twenty didn't know this store carries it" is.
Performance and Potential Diagnosis
We apply this method to what your brand is currently doing at the point of sale, and we deliver two things to you: where that execution is failing, with the proven cause, and how much you could gain if it is corrected, measured against a comparable store that is already achieving it.
It is a professional service with a defined scope, timeframe, and fees. The scope is agreed upon based on the category, number of stores, and territory.
The deliverable is an activation brief with five specifications. With these, your team or agency will design the solution. Without them, they'll have to guess.
-
Where should the stimulus exist? At what physical point in the store, chosen by the step that fails and not by where there is available space.
-
What problem does it solve? The proven cause, with the complete chain of events and the hypotheses that were discarded.
-
At what stage of the buying process does the sale break down?
-
What challenges does the solution have to overcome to work in that specific store?
-
What restrictions exist, what cannot be touched, and who decides?
Plus the sizing: how much it costs to solve it per year in your territory, calculated on real transactions and your expected participation, not on the entire gap of the category.
How do we measure success?
The baseline already exists when the diagnosis is complete: it's the count from the purchasing process that was recorded. It doesn't need to be measured again.
The timeframe is measured in purchase cycles, not weeks. Between cycles one and two, it's determined whether the intervention disrupted the automatic process and if there was a test. Between cycles three and four, the first repurchase occurs, which is the crucial signal: if they don't return, the problem wasn't the execution. From cycle six to eight, the reading is reliable.
A control store is maintained, comparable and without intervention. Without it, it's impossible to know whether the change was caused by the activation or the season. The most common mistake is changing the intervention before it can be measured.
This work does not solve some things
There are barriers that can't be fixed in-store: the product isn't appealing and there are no repeat purchases, the required format isn't available, the list price isn't competitive, and logistics don't reach the area. A perfect display won't fix a product that shoppers don't want to buy again.
When the cause lies outside the point of sale, we tell them, even if it means a shorter project. Recognizing it early prevents wasting the activation budget on a problem that falls under another department's responsibility.
Who is in charge of this work?
Carlos I. Alfonzo
Partner Director of TMC Business Consultants. Master's degree in Behavioral Neuroscience (PUCRS, Brazil) and Master's degree in Marketing (IESA, Venezuela). Thirty years in the consumer goods industry.
TMC has been promoting the consumer disposition funnel model in Latin America since 1996 and operates in Mexico, Latin America, Spain and the United States.
 |
|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Frequently Asked Questions
An agency executes: places materials, sets up displays, operates activations.
We determine what needs to be resolved and why, using field evidence, before the budget is spent. The deliverable is a brief that your agency can execute more effectively because they know exactly what barrier they're working against.
Three questions your next store investment should be able to answer
How do you know that's the cause and not something else? In how many of your stores is the same pattern occurring? What happens if you do nothing?
If any of the three questions lacks a quantifiable answer, the activation plan is an opinion with a budget. The Execution and Potential Diagnostic exists to provide one for all three.
Let's start with a conversation.