Abstract
Decision-making is more complex and even more important for consumers today than in the past. Today’s consumers has a wealth of information sources to their disposal, through advertising, news articles, direct mailings and word of mouth , in addition, there is a variety of stores and shopping malls that has broaden the sphere for consumer choice, and in the process complicated decision - making.
Consumers purchase intentions and decision that lead to the purchase are closely related to their future purchase behaviour. That is, a consumer who has used and is satisfied with a brand is likely to try it again on a future purchase occasion and is likely to follow this up with actual purchase of the brand. In this instance attitude is important to marketers not because it predicts what brands a consumers will buy, but because it can explain why they buy the brand they do.
There is a need to explore and understand consumer shopping behaviour and purchase drivers within the fruit juice category. The refrigerated fruit juice category presents much confusion to the consumer and/ or shoppers, (consumer and shopper being used inter changeable) and makes it difficult to shop the category.
There are many choices and lack of clarity around fruit juice types, therefore there is also a need to quantify how shoppers shop the fruit juice category. As part of a category approach to business management, consumer insights can improve merchandise positioning and promotion of the fruit juice category.
The purpose and importance of the study is to gain insights into how shoppers select fruit juice(s), identify patterns of shopping behaviour. To determine how involved are shoppers in the category when selecting and purchasing their fruit juice, and to what level their commit to they selected fruit juice type.
The purpose is not to produce a definitive conclusion or generalisable results, because shopper behaviour, will differ depending on store type, day of the week and day time part , but rather to form a basis to begin to understand the shoppers dynamics for the fruit juice category.
Insights gained and understanding of category purchase drivers, will enable the development of an optimal category flow (shop shelf merchandising lay out) ensuring overall improvements for the category ensuring that shopper needs are met, which in turn would result in an improved shopping experience. This will also allow for an optimal marketing mix for the various brands for the different fruit juice types, that, will ensure that the brand increased its potential to be selected in-store and therefore increase its rate of sale.
The literature reviewed, illustrated the complexity of consumer behaviour, as one is dealing with human behaviour, that is not always easy to comprehend, because many factors influence behaviour. These factors vary from internal factors and external factors. One can therefore not deal with the topic on consumer behaviour and look at factors in isolation, one should attempt to have a holistic approach as the literature suggest because many variables impact on one aspect for example such as decision-making.
The key lessons learnt from this study, is no different to what the literature states, the fruit juice consumer exhibited complex and various behaviour. Whilst the target groups were homogeneous, the shoppers exhibit different behaviours, hence the clusters from the (In)store TM model. However there are agreements on the following;
• Loyalty in the fruit juice category is low.
• There is a desire to try something new as indicative of the high prevalence of experiential shoppers.
• Shoppers indicated that they decision to purchase a fruit juice is not entirely made in-store, but rather planned.
• Shoppers exhibit a low level of commitment to the category.
• Shoppers indicated that product related attributes do influence their purchase decision.
• The fruit juice category is not well differentiated.
The above findings on product involvement and commitment have managerial implications, and are important issues in the development and implementation of marketing strategies, aimed at building and maintaining market share. In-store investment should be limited to product specific promotions, and not the traditional fridge-end display and gondola ends as these promotional elements are in effective in generating sales. The challenge is to win time for the shopper in-store, is also crucial as consumers do not always have the time to shop. The product category flow should be clear and uncluttered, with product types clearly segmented in the fridge.
Satisfying consumers are not enough to yield a competitive advantage, what marketers need to do is lock consumers into what their product has to offer. Marketers need to seek bonding and lasting relationships with their consumers, to ensure a competitive advantage, this they need to do by creating and evoked set, in other words, position their products in the minds of the consumer and entrench their offerings with a value added proposition intrinsic and extrinsic. The key to doing this is to ensure that their product offering(s) are tangible and visually differentiated, have an ownable proposition that will generate loyalty towards the product offering and create a high level of involvement.
Prof. F.J. Herbst