ShopAbility’s Lee McAllistair looks at the role of occasion-based messaging in the Grocery and Pharmacy Channels in the UK.
What’s your occasion?
There is a lot of confusion about the role of the occasion in retail in Australia. We tend to stay safe and stick to category type displays without actively marketing in-store to specific occasions such as dinner tonight and lunch on-the-go, for example. We’ve been on to the gifting occasion for a while with Xmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day, but gifting seems to be the only occasion that retailers seem to universally feel comfortable shouting out about.
Well, not so in the UK. In-store marketing based on occasion is alive and well in UK Grocery and Pharmacy channels – and there’s a lot we can learn.
Take a look at this.
It’s the Marks & Spencer ‘dine in for 2 for a tenner’ campaign. You’ve never seen occasion-based messaging quite so blatant or quite so well done as this. Here’s the deal: select an eligible main, a side, a dessert and a bottle of wine all for 10 pounds. A brilliant strategy in an economic downturn, with things still looking pretty dire overall in the Mother Country.
About half of the food section of the M&S store is dedicated to this promotion. Gondola ends contain signage (as per the image) and selections of each item ready to grab and go. An entire three aisles were dedicated to the eligible mains, sides and desserts – a huge range of ready to eat meals, all clearly labelled in terms of their quality, nutritional value and even sustainability credentials (e.g. ‘this salad nicoise is made from sustainable fish stocks’).
The promotion is signed clearly outside the front of the store, at entrance, overhead, on gondola ends and aisles and even blank walls. And the shoppers LOVE IT. A real buzz in-store, conversations among friends in the queues, and unsolicited praise about it from friends of mine living in the UK… this is occasion-based shopper marketing that is bang on the money.
Here’s another example: Boots pharmacies located in high-traffic urban areas are offering lunch-on-the-run deals for under 3 pounds 50 including a drink. Brilliant. People often stop in to the Boots for drugs or emergency items like stockings… now they can grab their lunch as well. In fact, I think Boots urban locations are becoming destination lunch-on-the-run stores and their rest of store offer is adding incremental sales to the lunch purchase. A terrific traffic driver.
Superdrug are doing a similar thing: sandwich, snack and drink lunch deals:
Meanwhile, another fabulous example of occasion-based messaging in the BHS department store in Bath. ‘ Beach-ready body for £30′ in the swimwear department. All the push-you-out-and-suck-you-in bathing suits all displayed together in one area for a fixed price. And even more brilliantly, BHS is literally right across the road from the new spa complex and the swimwear is positioned just inside the entry doors to capture all the impulse purchases from disorganised travellers who didn’t book their spa package in advance… like me!
Sainsbury’s, as ever, have all the occasions covered. On your way to a friend’s for dinner or off out on a date? Flowers and chocolates displayed together right at the front of the store with good price points and a service counter located nearby.
Sainsbury’s range of ready-to-eat meal solutions for the dinner tonight occasion also takes some beating! The English sure know how to do ready-to-eat. Gourmet salads, Moroccan, Indian, Thai – you name the cuisine, they’ve probably got it. Leaves our Australian range of overpriced fresh soups and gluggy instant pastas for dead. And the dinner tonight options are together in clear displays easily accessible without shopping the rest of the store.
Yep, the UK are leading the way in occasion-based shopper marketing in store. On the downside, some of these stores are undoing all their good work by only having 1 or 2 serviced checkouts and pushing everyone else through self service checkouts which they quite obviously and loudly hated (and were slow). But, that aside, there is a lot we can look at by way of leveraging occasions in Australian retail.
In Summary:
- What are the relevant shopper occasions for your category? Map your category to your shopper occasion to your channel. Some occasions will belong in one store type and not in another – you may need to change your occasion-based marketing based on channel type.
- What other categories are likely to be shopped by the same shopper for the same occasion and how can they be displayed and promoted together? Are there oppportunities for cross-supplier promotion based on occasion?
- Where in the store are shoppers likely to go to find what they need for the particular occasion? Is your display in the right place?
- Is there a clear value proposition and price point based on the occasion? Marks & Spencer ‘Dine in for 2 for £10′ is a great example of this.
- Is the occasion communicated multiple times on the shopper path to purchase and signposted clearly in terms of where to find it in store?
- Have you thought about the other occasions shoppers visit a particular store type for at what time of day, and how you might leverage the occasion opportunity? Examples are fuel before and after work and the snack / gut fill on the run opportunity, and the Boots-style lunch deals in inner city pharmacies when shoppers come in for emergency items.
- Is there a place for localised occasion-based marketing? A perfect example is the department store opposite the spa centre heavily promoting swimwear. There may be localised opportunities in particular stores you distribute in.
So… just in time for Xmas… keep your eye out for the best occasion-based marketing of the season! How can you apply these principles to your product or retail offer? Time to think outside just the gift box.
