Path to Purchase Insights

As a key account  or category manager, understanding the consumer / shopper path to purchase is a very powerful way to turn data and observations into insights, and identify possible category or brand growth opportunities. To unlock customer category growth opportunities we will focus on three key stages in any path to purchase conversion journey. We call these: drivers to store, drivers to category and drivers to purchase:
 

Drivers to Store

What influences shoppers in our category when they decide where to shop for our category?

Drivers to Category

What influences shoppers when they choose which category to shop? Is our category visible, attractive and easy to find?

Drivers to Purchase

What influences the shopper category purchase decision? Is it easy to shop, easy to find and buy brands on shelf/ online – and are there clearly targeted promotions with clear point of sale communication?

 
A careful review of the path to purchase will almost always reveal category and brand strengths and weaknesses. As we have learned, our category will play a unique role in our customer’s business and; aligned to that, encouraging shoppers to shop our category (and brand!) in our customer relies on insights about what’s driving shoppers (what’s working) and what’s inhibiting shoppers (what’s not working).

For example, we may observe that the category adjacencies could be enhanced based on insights about products frequently purchased together, or that category signposting on our customer’s website could be improved based on insights about how easily our shoppers can find the category online – or that a shopper mission insight suggests a range review is needed in our customer’s stores.

Understanding the path to purchase is a rich treasure trove of insight, even if you are working with a limited budget. The objective is to find growth opportunities in the ‘gaps’ from data and our observations, so that we can demonstrate the commercial value of our proposition to our customer.

Let’s look at some examples in more detail to bring to life some of the key growth opportunities in path to purchase insights: