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 communication and Internal 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. POP communication also induces shoppers to stay at the retail outlet for a longer duration leading to increased spending,” the study states.