How Campbell Soup Fixed Its Confusing Shelves
Shopper-marketing experts have discovered that the shopper they’ve been observing, questioning and surveying all these years has had a second, silent partner along for the store visit: her subconscious. Shopper marketing is in the throes of a paradigm shift, as the field learns how to best leverage new technologies that aim to expose what consumers feel but cannot necessarily articulate.
Campbell Soup Co., for one, worked with Innerscope Research to rethink its package design and in-store displays. The first study in 2008, combined biometric vests and “hat-cam” cameras (complemented by eye-tracking/pupil measurement, as participants subsequently re-experienced their shopping trips on video) with in-depth, ethnographic interviews. The study revealed that even with major merchandising improvements executed several years earlier, consumers still found the soup category confusing and frustrating to shop. People thought of Campbell’s as soothing, nurturing and healing — but that wasn’t translating into purchases. In store, subjects experienced “navigational disorientation,” finding the wall of red and white soup cans overwhelming. So, with little biometric response, they chose a soup and moved on. Those who really explored the shelves had a greater, biometrically evident emotional response and bought more soup.