Based on the idea of promoting in-store communication at the point of purchase (POP), a study states that while advertising attracts, the success of all communication efforts in many cases depends on the last five per cent of the effort which manifests itself at the POP just before the consumer chooses to buy, rather than the 95 per cent that preceded it.
The study — The Path to Purchase during Shopping— by Piyush Kumar Sinha, professor of marketing at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and Gopi Krishnaswamy, CEO, Insight Instore, Bangalore states that customers found POP more helpful in case of consumer durable, lifestyle and hi-tech products. This led us to assume that the information search is directly proportional to the shopping behaviour. The study further indicates that PoP communication seem to influence impulse purchase more as compared to planned purchase.
The study is an attempt to understand the impact of the major factors on the purchase behaviour of shoppers by examining purchase paths across different product categories signifying different shopping orientations, across culturally distinct regions; and across different stages of retail evolution.
According to the study, retailers perform many functions which can be segregated into two groups: External or Divergent Communication and Internal or Convergent Communication. External or Divergent communication is the aspect of retail communication that the retailer uses to attract customers to the store and generate store traffic by using mass media vehicles such as television, newspapers and radio. It is also used to build and manage the store image so that it becomes a destination for its customers. The internal communication reinforces the store image by ensuring that there is no dissonance in the mind of the customers. Stores use tools such as visual merchandising, signage and graphics, and other forms of point-of-purchase communication (PoP). The combined effect of these two sets of communication creates an effective strategy, the study states.
"In-store or PoP communication is the aspect of retail communication that comes into play once the customer is within the precincts of the store. It plays a very important role in influencing the consumer decision-making process. For the retailer, with the increasing decline in sales support at the retail outlet, POP acts as a surrogate salesperson. It has been found that a high level of brand awareness does not always translate into sales.
Shoppers do take into consideration the information they acquire in stores, in addition to relying on out of store communication. POP provides the marketer the last opportunity to communicate with the shopper before a purchase is made. This communication at the shop can play several roles of informing, reminding, encouraging, creating excitement or interactivity and building store image. It has been found that information recall is enhanced when the context in which people attempt to retrieve information is the same as the context in which they originally coded the information.
Such information activates consumers' memories pertaining to brand and its features and helps the consumer to make a purchase decision in favour of the displayed brand. POP communication also induces shoppers to stay at the retail outlet for a longer duration leading to increased spending,” the study states.
| (a) Shoppers would follow a set path in processing information to decide their purchase |
| (b) This path may not be hierarchical |
| (c) Even in case of a hierarchical process, the steps may not follow the same order |
| (d) The path-to-purchase would be affected by the kind of shopping process adopted by customers |
| (e) The process would also be affected by the format of the store chosen by the shoppers |
| (f) A proiri product/brand decisions made before visiting the store would impact the shopping process |