Words Out of the Past
By now all the readers of my Views are probably aware of my interest in Point of Purchase Research or In-Store Research as some call it. To give you an idea of how I developed my interest, I would like to share the words of the client for the very first In-Store Study conducted within Procter & Gamble. (At lease to my knowledge.) This study was conducted in the 1970s. The study involved a Toilet Tissue Market Segmentation Study.
Comments:
In-Store Research has been around a long time. My disappointment has been that so many researchers have not seen the value of this type of research. I guess that speaks loudly about my inability to sell something I think has immense value. It was a good thing my major profession was not sales.
- I was pleased to see the very high level of cooperation we obtained from the panelists. Almost everyone completed the interview and took the time to thoroughly answer our questions.
- The responses seemed very open and honest, with no apparent reluctance to state price as the key reason for a brand's selection.
- I was disappointed in the low number of customers/panelists on Tuesday and Wednesday, as it greatly reduced our efficiency.
- I like this technique because the sampling error is small and we can get data in direct proportion to sales volume.
- After observing numerous interviews, I expect many of our questions could be asked in a central location study. By asking panelists to come prepared to make a bathroom tissue purchase, we could simulate a store shelf and have better control of price/brand availability/colors. (Note: We constructed a simulated store facility. We conducted 13 studies comparing data from the simulated store with real stores and found significant differences in all 13 studies as well as differences we considered very important in four of the studies. Important because the course of action was changed.)
- The cooperation of the shoppers exceeded my expectations. During the first two days of interviewing, we had only one refusal. (Note: Don't look for that degree of cooperation today. Expect between 20% and 25% refusal rates.)
In future Views, I will show where the data from In-Store Research was different from data collected in telephone and CLT studies. I all cases the In-Store Data was seen as being the more reliable.