Miller-Zell's shopper behavior study

January 20, 2009 by Dave Haynes

It took me a week but I am now going through stuff from a road trip last week, and came across a handout from retail design biggie Miller-Zell.

The Atlanta-based company sponsored the Design Studio at last week’s NRF show and released results of a study on how the struggling economy is impacting shopping habits.

The online survey of some 800 people, done right before Christmas, showed some predictably big changes.

• Pre-planning is way up.  This coupled with a big increase in internet research indicate shoppers are coming to the retail store more armed than ever with knowledge of pricing, product capabilities and competitor products. 
  
• Wage earners exceeding $100K were far more negative about the economy than all other wage earning categories
  
• Females are drivers of tighter fiscal discipline in the household, including the reduction of family night out
  
• The general trend across age, gender and income was to reduce spending, trade down and brand switch to private label product. 

“As economic conditions change rapidly, it is important that retailers and manufacturers continue to have their finger on the pulse of changing shopper behavior,” said Steven Skinner, Miller Zell Vice President of Consumer Products, on the company’s Inside The Aisle blog. “Our survey indicated unexpected divergence in shopping behavior by gender and wage. We believe this holds great importance for how retailers and manufacturers design their stores and market their products to consumers in mass media and inside of the store.” 

Miller Zell’s 2009 Shopper Behavior Survey provides actionable insights for retailers who are struggling to survive the economic storm. “This was the worst holiday shopping season in recent history. Getting an understanding of the consumer, their motivations and translating that to the retail environment is more important than ever before,” said Peter Stamos, Executive Vice President, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for Miller Zell. 

Very true, and anyone running a screen network in retail, if they haven’t already, needs to steadily be considering the consumer mindset and tuning the content offer/mix to be in sync with that. Get it right, and the impact should be noticeable. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing, and you may be losing relevance.