By Doug Stephens

I sat on a panel discussion this week that explored how social and mobile media is changing the way customer feedback is collected, analyzed and acted upon by retailers. One specific question asked how mobile devices can be used in a retail environment to facilitate better customer feedback or improve responsiveness to complaints. Within the context of this discussion, the idea was to comment on how mobile is being used as a customer service channel but it occurred to me that there’s a much more important data track.  One  that provides a completely new and revolutionary opportunity for marketers.

Say versus Do

First, one has to appreciate the historic problem with consumer research and the challenge it’s always posed for retail marketers.  Consumer research often attempts to predict future consumer behavior but the reality is that consumers very often say things that don’t correspond at all to what they eventually do in store.  In fact, there’s often a gaping disconnect between a consumer’s needs as articulated in focus groups and the basket of stuff that gets taken home from the store.  If the two matched up even the least bit closely, marketing would be a cinch but they often don’t and with good reason – consumers rarely have a clue why they do what they do in stores!  And in other cases, focus group participants simply don’t tell the truth, which probably doesn’t come as any great shock.

Data, data everywhere…

One thing is for sure, the problem with consumer and shopper research isn’t born out of a lack of data.  We’ve got  a plethora of information on both ends of the shopping spectrum, loads of focus groups, surveys and intercepts to gauge needs on the front end and a steady flow of point of sale data to analyze purchases on the back end.  What have been missing are the critical insights in the middle – what shoppers actually do in the store!  This has largely been the realm of anecdotal data and lab-based studies, both of which are often highly inaccurate.

Every move you make

That’s where I believe mobile apps, near field communication, location based services and other intelligent retail technologies are poised to revolutionize our approach to consumer and shopper research.  For the first time ever, researchers will be able to connect the expressed needs of consumers with their actual, physical path to purchase.  Questions like where they go in the store and where don’t they go, where they stop and what they race right by will finally be precisely answerable.  We’ll have visibility into the specific events that trigger a customer to abandon their visit or buy more than usual.  We’ll see more clearly what occurrences precede a complaint.  We’ll even have the potential to see where they’ve come from and where they go after leaving the store.  And what’s critical is that marketers can view this kind of information in aggregate according to what thousands of consumers do, not simply within a narrow and controlled study group.

But understanding the consumer’s physical path is only one of the new streams of data.  The other and more important stream will reveal what they actually engaged and interacted with in the space.  Which in-store marketing messages did they connect with and for how long, which coupons did they download, which products did they scan but put back without buying?  Marketers will see where consumers required more or less information to make a decision and perhaps even when they compared prices with competitors before deciding.  Even insights on how different ages, sexes and races move through a given retail environment are entirely possible.

Finally marketers can validate the reams of data they currently collect with credible information on the consumer’s actual in-store behavior.  This presents a whole new world of opportunity to give retail consumers what they want – potentially without ever once asking them.  It’s also chance to better understand the gap between what consumers say and what they do.

In fact, it’s entirely possible that this new ability to validate in-store consumer behavior will render front and back end consumer surveys a thing of the past.