Long gone are the days of the “local grocer.” The 1990s brought about major changes in the retail industry when the entrance of productive establishments affiliated with national chains displaced much less productive “mom and pop” and single-unit stores. Today, the retail industry continues to expand and evolve, bustling with enough shopping options to satisfy even the most discerning shopper. And while the proliferation of retail has brought about a new consumer-centric environment, in-store measurement of marketing practices has remained virtually stagnant for 50 years.

From tactical to strategic
Is the display in the deli aisle more productive in closing a sale than the signage in the lobby? Or perhaps the voice-enabled display in the promotion aisle area generates the most traffic. Nielsen and the In-Store Marketing Institute—in collaboration with the P.R.I.S.M. consortium of leading retailers, manufacturers, promotion agencies, and media agencies—have developed a breakthrough process to understand which specific in-store media types are most influential in driving incremental sales, margin and lift. This not only facilitates the sales process with a clear and recognized measurement standard, but it creates a currency for the in-store media process that can increase corporate valuations for all involved.

Using an innovative approach that relies on counting devices that are placed at strategic locations in every part of the store, shoppers are counted each time they enter a measured area. By linking consumer traffic to specific in-store media and marketing conditions, a new and powerful “opportunity to see” measure is created. Coverage of all in-store marketing media includes merchandising activity, retail TV and radio networks, shelf talkers, cart-talkers, digital signage and other point-of-purchase displays. In addition, Nielsen In-Store utilizes custom surveys to provide insights on the composition of shoppers, including their age/sex, day/time of purchase and trip mission.

Long-awaited insights
The massive array of audience and in-store marketing data answers important questions that have been left unanswered to date:

• What is the absolute audience size?
• Where can key targets best be reached?
• How large is the audience in a category’s primary stocking location?
• What time of day and days of the week can key targets best be reached?
• What in-store conditions occurred?
• Did the in-store marketing campaign deliver incremental sales, and what was the cost per consumer reached?

For the first time, marketers can now determine the optimal marketing vehicles and store part locations for a given brand in a given category in a given retailer for a given consumer target.

Capitalize on a targeted audience
Retailers and manufacturers are realizing a transformational shift in thinking of in-store as media and rethinking how and where consumers are reached. Consider the fact that millions of shoppers will grace the aisles of any given retailer in any particular month. By simply comparing impressions across nearby categories and storeparts, marketers can now quantify audience opportunities—and make adjustments to capitalize on them.

Take for example the carbonated soft drink and hair care categories in one retailer studied. In one month’s time, over 1,700,000 shoppers, including 1,000,000 women, bypassed hair care to go down the carbonated soft drink aisle. Of those women, over 500,000 were between the ages of 24–54—a key demographic target for the hair care category. Just think of the potential sales impact of turning even a fraction of that number.

In addition to analyzing the effectiveness of in-store media for a particular category virtually anywhere in the store, retailers can examine storeparts by specific demographic targets to determine the best zone for optimal audience gross impressions. With this information in hand, marketers can craft better customer messaging to effect behavior, rearrange category placement of low-closure categories to encourage purchases and ensure staffing levels are tied to the maximum presence of customers in-store—not to sales proxy.

Prime-time audience potential
The in-store environment explodes with opportunities to reach the consumer. Consider this: American Idol—the most popular prime-time broadcast TV show currently running—reached 246,000 Females aged 25–54 with Gross Impressions in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose DMA during a one night broadcast in May 2007. Compare that with the one week in-store average audience Gross Impressions of a retailer in the same area who reached 1,155,489 Females aged 25–54 in just the lobby area alone—an audience increase of almost one million! Reach and frequency take on a whole new meaning for the in-store environment—giving marketers the ammunition needed to turn “opportunities to see” into “opportunities to sell.”

With increased competition vying for a share of the consumer’s shrinking dollar, combining audience measurement reach and frequency with traditional methods of tracking causal and sales data provides the edge necessary to compete in the highly fragmented retail landscape. Understanding who is in the store and what types of marketing stimuli are encountered—and importantly, the effectiveness of these sightings—can place in-store strategic measurement on comparable platforms as more traditional marketing vehicles like print, broadcast and billboards.

Clear and simple vision
With the realization that in-store audiences are as large as prime-time television and radio, marketers in the in-store space have a unique opportunity to measure the retail audience’s exposure to in-store marketing to better evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing dollar invested. Manufacturers want answers to many questions about the impact of their in-store media. Retailers want insights that will shape and define consumer reach in their stores and the ability to find out what works and what doesn’t. Ad agencies want to better relate to in-store marketing with comparable metrics to “their world.” And media companies want to be supported with a clear and recognized measurement standard to facilitate the in-store media sell-in process. Nielsen In-Store fuels this 360-degree planning process.