Growing category love at Asda
For Asda, a department can be as big as many retailers in £ turnover – so categories need careful management. Success depends on understanding customer needs/behaviours, competitors and category trends. Over the last five years we've researched over 20 different categories - spanning both food and non-food.
Below are some of the techniques we've used and the benefits they've provided.
“ABA understands how to unpick category opportunities within the context of the parent brand. The team always reveal key opportunities, and help identify the required actions that will step-change improvements in performance.”
Liz Lamb, Senior Director, Insight & Pricing
Longitudinal approach means REAL vs. remembered attitudes and behaviours are explored
Communities - often using WhatsApp
Intercepts catch customers while in ‘genuine shopping mode’ – combining this with observations and the lessons of behavioural economics allows us to get to the true drivers of behaviour
Observation/Depth Interviews
Large-scale quantitative surveys mean we can establish key behaviours, influences and views shaping the category
Usage & Attitude Surveys (U&A)
Revealing consumers’ emotional responses to shopping (either in-store or online) and thereby unpicking reactions across each stage of the customer journey
Bio-metric Interviews
Asking customers to shop whilst wearing high-tech glasses, which track and record eye movements, provides an accurate picture of what is seen and for how long
Eye Tracking
Spending time with customers, often in their own home, allows us to inhabit their world and see their life as it really is
Ethnography
A useful tool if the objectives require thinking creatively about future opportunities - and a good way for stakeholders to observe/interact with shoppers
Focus Groups
Typically pre-recruited, these sessions allow a full shopping trip to be observed - they often involve a visit to a rival store to allow comparisons
Accompanied Shopping Trips
