2011 Retailer Shopper Marketing Survey: Satisfaction Levels

What's it like to create, fund and implement shopper marketing programs these days from a retailer point-of-view? MarketingLab sought insights into the challenges retailers face again this year in its August survey of 33 retail marketers, representing each major retail channel.

As was the case in the 2010 survey, respondents are generally very familiar with shopper marketing practices. Eighty-five percent of the retail marketers surveyed have been conducting vendor-driven shopper marketing initiatives for three years or more, up from 79 percent last year. Of the 2011 group, about one-third have been running programs for seven years or more.

Frequency is high as well, with more than half of retailers conducting shopper marketing programs at least six times a year, and 20 percent managing 16 or more a year.

And yet for all their experience, many marketers seem to be launching programs without proper resources. Only 13 percent of those surveyed feel they have "great insights" to fuel their shopper marketing programs. That's down considerably from 2010 participants, 35 percent of whom felt they had great insights.

Responding to this year's survey findings, Kat Kozitza, director of interactive and direct marketing at Supervalu, pointed to technical constraints. "Not all of the POS systems have converted to capture details in the GS1 barcode," she said, "so using this as a data source is spotty—for us, anyway. [And] much of the reporting is focused on sales, not insights."

Further, marketers say they continue to feel frustrated in their efforts to convert what insights they have into effective programs. Roughly on par with last year, 81 percent of the 2011 group feel they are "sometimes", "almost never" or "never" successful in converting insights.

In the way of explanation, a VP of consumer insights for a 150+ store regional supermarket chain told RetailWire, "Whether it is a merchandiser or category manager who drives the shopper marketing programs, their time is often stretched to the limit with schematics, advertising promotions, vendor deals, profit margins, price comparisons, logistics, production and out-of-stocks.  Retailers seem to put too much on the plates of these merchandising and CM decision makers who can’t focus on what the shopper really wants."

Asked how she would remedy the problem, the executive offered that the marketing department should be driving the shopper promotions based on consumer information that they should be constantly gathering and analyzing. "This would include sales data, shopper trend information, syndicated data and consumer feedback," she said.

Download a complete Executive Summary of MarketingLab's Retailer-Activated Shopper Marketing Program Survey 2011...

Learn about retailer responses to how program sell-in and measurement is going, plus MarketingLab's recommendations for best practices. Use the form below to download your copy. We also welcome comments and/or suggestions on this Tip series.