Shopper:Lab™: Shopper Facility

Recent work with clients has shown that traditional approaches to groups, interviews and observations can be a bit formulaic and lacking in impact. The traditional approach to qual relies on the use of consumer verbatims in powerpoint charts coupled with researcher interpretation. We have found that most clients have a cupboard full of videos of groups that never get watched.

At Blue Yonder we recognise the need to research the shopper in an appropriate environment. Our ‘storelab’ facility allows us to research at shelf behaviour in a realistic setting. We can take shoppers to a real fixture to research how they interact with packs, how they use shelf communication devices and how they browse a category. With carefully placed video cameras we can see how packs are handled and viewed without disturbing the actual behaviour. This allows us to gain insight into pack ergonomic design, standout and communication.

We are uniquely able to advise on the use of ‘affordances*’ to ensure that packs speak to shoppers from the first moment of truth and that they are intuitively easy to use in store.

With interview rooms adjacent to the ‘storelab’ we can take shoppers straight to one side for depth interviews stimulated with the video material of their actual at shelf behaviour. This allows us to explore their motivations and behaviour immediately afterwards.

‘storelab’ is a great facility for researching early stage pack designs, new branding and graphic devices, positioning on shelf etc.

Our experienced qual team will work with you to create a tailor made research programme that meets your objectives making the best use of our facility.

*affordances are the design features in a pack that give clues as to how to use that pack. These are particularly important in any pack design that requires a new behaviour on the part of the shopper.