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Thinking, talking, and transforming online.

It’s been said many times, by many people, and it’s so, so true. Winning is a team sport!

Craig McCulloch

2 minutes

/ 5th March 2021
  • Group
  • Sales & Distribution
  • Category Insight

Thinking, doing and transforming online

What’s the story of this decade (so far..?)

Everything is disrupted, everything is dynamic, everything retail is adapting, transforming, diversifying and innovating. So, there’s everything to play for.
Category segmentation, values and offerings are blurring, and shoppers’ habits and behaviours have changed. More shoppers are using multiple buying channels.

I think it was Rory Sutherland who said: “We spend so much time thinking about how marketing works, how media works, how targeting & technology works, we’ve taken our minds off the more important question: How do our customers & their shoppers work?”
The point he makes is that everything starts and finishes with deep customer and shopper insight and understanding. And that’s where the DCS Category & Insight team excel, with an understanding of how our customers think and how to optimise our approach, our activations.

The most disrupted decade in recent history.

We’re experiencing mass technology innovation, global multi-channel competition, mass convenience, utility & choice.

The result of this mass disruption is that control has shifted to shoppers. Shoppers drive the media choice. Shoppers are the omni-channel influencers and customers’ expectations continue to rise, they want an enhanced, convenient shopping experience… and woe betide anyone who falls short of their expectations.

Whilst digital commerce has changed everything, the fundamentals of retailing have not changed. It’s still about understanding the shopper, and all about shopper behaviour data, because it drives insights that support sales, loyalty and referral.

Knowledge is power – insight is more powerful. The omni-channel shopping experience.

This ecosystem collects and uses data at every stage of the buying journey to engage, influence and convert sales. It works tirelessly in the background to build and retain custom.
Essentially, it’s about examining and understanding the 5M’s - MORTALS, MOMENTS, MEDIA, MESSAGE, MOTIVATION.

And that’s where the DCS teams play a vital role in supporting both customers and suppliers.

MORTALS
We help you understand how, what, where and when you are winning and losing.
We can help identify micro moments, and optimise media, messages and buying motivation triggers.
We can tell you what shoppers are doing online, develop performance comparisons, and analyse category, product and brand trends, range gaps and opportunities.


MOMENTS
Moments are buying journey mind states (awareness, interest, consideration, converted, championing). Understanding these are essential for crafting range dynamics and optimising shopping journey touchpoints. By understanding these ‘moments’ we can optimise and personalise based on previous shopper behaviours.

MEDIA
Insight and data mining can enable omni-channel media optimisation. One activation no longer fits all, so we can help optimise media by specific channel.

MESSAGE
We can help you leverage data evidence to identify the key message content and motivation contextualisation.

MOTIVATION.
Motivation means creating a relevant, timely buying trigger which underpins the overall message.
In eCommerce this means a compelling offer that drives basket value. These can be theme driven, value and volume driven, repeat purchase or loyalty driven.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help optimise your digital activity, get in touch with your DCS account manager.