Views From The Hills of Kentucky :: The Acceptance of In-Store Research Continues to Grow

Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

The Acceptance of In-Store Research Continues to Grow

For the past 30 years some of us in consumer and market research have been promoting a concept I will call "Assessment in Context." Others may call it "In-Situ" research. some will call it "In-Store" research. (Actually it is broader than in-store, it includes in the home, office or wherever the product is used.) However, in-store research has been the primary focus of the concept. Over the years, most of us who have been recommending this change in the test environment have had to put up with considerable ridicule. The 1970's and early 1980's were particularly a problem for me at P&G. Well, as they say, the worm is turning. More and more practitioners are becoming aware of the benefits (and I might add the difficulties) of in-store research. I cannot understand how so many embraced the idea of in-home research and rejected in-store research.

In the magazine, Quirks, May 1998, Joseph Rydholm, editor, wrote an excellent article promoting in-store research. In the article, he defines consumer and shopper research and how it is different and gives different results. He also cites examples of where the consumer tells one story away from the store, but in the store you get a completely different picture. Following are a couple of his statements:

You just can't sit there in focus group discussions and ask how people shop.
Consumers are being asked to talk about something they may not be aware they are doing.
The important behavior is subconscious, and that sort of questioning (FGIs) is not going to get it.
Shoppers have to learn routines called schemata, pre-programmed behavioral responses triggered by the environment, like a macro on a computer.

Joseph Rydholm is just the latest of many prominent researchers writing about the merits of in-store research. By actual count there are over 20 researchers endorsing the point-of-sale research advantage. These researchers range from Gerald Berstell who has written at least three articles ("Point-of-sale research reveals spontaneous buying decisions" in Marketing News, "Study what people do, not what they say" Marketing News, "Looking outside the box" Marketing Research); David Kay ("Go where the consumers are and talk to them" Marketing News); to Richard Lutz's final Editorial in the Journal of Marketing Research where he encourages us to use the natural consumer setting as research sites to enable the discovery of new, unanticipated, and possibly critical behaviors that do not occur in the laboratory settings.

In a nine-page article in Inc magazine last year titled, "The New Market Research," by Joshua Macht, he states, "Forget focus groups and mail surveys. The trouble is, consumers rarely act in real life the way they do in a 'Laboratory' setting." As he points out, "Rather than invite the consumers into artificial testing situations, marketers now charge out into the field to observe and examine consumers at work, in stores and even in the home."