UNLOCKING THE POWER OF EMOTION TO ENHANCE SHOPPER ENGAGEMENT

The CHALLENGE

For a national hard goods retailer with close competitors offering very similar products, it became clear that the key to meaningful differentiation was the shopper experience.

Burke was tasked with uncovering the shopper-centric insight that would allow the retailer to deliver beyond the functional necessities and ultimately, engage customers on an emotional level.

The APPROACH

Burke developed a learning plan to gain insight about the functional and emotional needs of shoppers in a hard goods category, in order to better understand what drives their choice of retailer. We built insight through the various phases of the learning plan:

• Online mobile forums explored which aspects were central to its shopper and dug deep into the underlying motivations and emotions.
• A workshop with the client team transformed those insights into a set of attributes that covered the important emotional and functional elements of the retail experience, which we could then test quantitatively.
• A multivariate analysis illuminated the relationship among the attributes and share of wallet, and revealed the extent to which emotions and function impact choice of retailer.

The OUTCOME

The retailer emerged with a newly enriched understanding of the functional and emotional perceptions of its brand, its shopper’s service experience and retailer choice motivations. The research helped the retailer adjust its strategy and prioritize investment in areas that fostered a better emotional connection, making shoppers more likely to choose the retailer again in the future.