Millward Brown: Point of View

Shopping: Not About Product or Place, but Interaction

Marketers want people to get closer to their brands, but retailers have always owned the direct relationship with shoppers. Retailers diligently research shopper needs, motivations, and behaviors to find ways to improve the experiences of people visiting their stores, but they do this more for their own benefit than for any individual brand (save their own private labels).

For brand marketers, influencing a retailer is not an easy thing to do. It feels like inviting yourself to someone else's party. So, as it becomes more and more difficult to get a good return on investments in brand communications, what other options do brands have to influence people as they shop?

The good news is that there are indeed many options available. It is a simple matter of making the most of the very meaning of the word "commerce," which Webster's defines as "social intercourse: interchange of ideas, opinions, or sentiments." Trading goods, then, is about human interaction. To succeed, marketers should focus on leveraging opportunities to directly interact with people.

From ancient bazaars
to today's street
markets, shopping
malls, and online
marketplaces, people
like to interact.

"The Clue Train Manifesto" made the same point when it was published online in April 1999. Written by four experts on the then-nascent Internet, the Manifesto described the new reality of online communication. "Markets are conversations," reads the first of the 95 theses. The beauty of that observation resided not only in the way it predicted the extraordinary rise of social media and renewed interest in word of mouth, but also in its ability to remind us of a simple human truth that we had somehow forgotten on this side of the globe: At its core, shopping is a deal between two people. From ancient bazaars to today's street markets, shopping malls, and online marketplaces, people like to interact.

Content:

It's All About Real and Genuine Human Needs
Beware of the Turbulence Zone
Create Your Own Store
Add Services
Personalization
Use Your "Voice" Carefully
Last Call for Reinvention

Download Shopping: Not About Product or Place, but Interaction (pdf, 171 Kb)

To read more about about shopping and human interaction, visit www.mb-blog.com.

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