CAN BIG DATA FIND THE MYSTERY SHOPPERS OF "BEST STUFF ON EARTH"?
"The Best Stuff on Earth" are found missing from store shelves. Data scientists are trying to investigate the data analytics report to find the Mystery Shopper. Who is the Mystery Shopper? Where does he/she live and what does he/she do ? How many are they?
Snapple Iced tea, the pioneer product 'Made From the Best Stuff on Earth' whose huge success created a whole new category of Ready-To-Drink (RTD) Iced Tea in the over-cluttered and saturated beverage industry. In 1972 (pre social media era), an All-Natural refreshment drink was sold for the first time through health stores in New York City. The Snapple craze soon spread to all 50 states by 1992. Witnessing the phenomenal growth in this category big giants such as Brisk (Pepsi-Lipton), Nestea, Arizona, Honest, Sobe etc entered the market. And thus, the Hunger Games for market share began!
Hunger Games Part I: Companies started to invest money to create unique product differentiations such as owning a distinct product attribute like "Made From The Best Stuff on Earth" by Snapple, "Real Brewed" by Lipton, "All-Natural" by Honest Tea; launching product variants for instance "Half & Half", "Diet", "Fruit Punch"; attracting shopper attention through packaging differentiation such as "Wide mouth Glass Bottle", "Colorful Graffiti Cans" etc.
Hunger Games Part II: After each brand assured a pie of the market share, companies invested more money to build loyal tribes of customers through content-driven brand engagement. Now the RTD Iced Tea category is more than 40 years old, all major brands have a dedicated website building engagement through unique content to subtly boost product advocacy, consumption, usage rate, usage occasions etc. For instance: Lipton Iced Tea has created a whole community of mothers who share their recipes using Lipton Tea products whereas Snapple Iced Tea has its followers raving about 'Sip on some knowledge with Real Facts' printed under its bottle caps.
But what came first: The Chicken or the Egg? Let me rephrase the question: What came first The Mystery Shopper or Snapple? May be Big Data can help us solve that mystery!!Numbers have always fascinated humans and quite important to how we grasp the world around us. Numbers help us to measure our subject of interest to make better decisions. I believe our brains want to see patterns. Not only in numbers. We also see faces from clouds to moon craters. That's what Data Scientists, a fairly new breed of analysts do. They collect, analyze and report consumer insights and create brand stories to engage and enhance User Experience (UX) with the brand.
With all the talk about “big data”, I thought of sharing results of a latest CMO survey published in Feb 2012 issue of CMOSurvey.org indicating rise in the percentage of marketing budget spent on marketing analytics and number of people employed in marketing analytics. And most important, the trend is expected to continue in future.
The big question is when is a brand ready to unleash the power of big data and reveal the identity of the Mystery Shopper? Factors such as product category, product life cycle, point-of-sale, drivers of consumption, marketing channel used to communicate and engage with the target audience etc play a crucial role in deciding the readiness of a brand to unleash the data big bang. The RTD Iced Tea is a growing product category which still primarily relies on product-centric advertising with erratic content driven engagement on social media platforms limited from campaign-to-campaign.
Now, Big data can change the rules of the game. It is helpful to analyze past sales and ad campaign figures to identify new growth areas, category trends, pricing power, higher segment penetration, better distribution, space/shelf management, key messaging, media channels etc. Research can show that ads with Little Fruits appeal to kids and adults in their 40s, but those in the in between ages are more interested in the upbeat, peppy spots. Taking this into consideration, Snapple came up with an idea to revamp the brand for teenagers through 34 year olds by animating its bottles depicting skate rats and punks, complete with clothes and hairpieces. Thus, personifying the bottle reflecting the target demographic based on research.
As part of its "Real Experiences" campaign, Snapple implements the 'Design Thinking' approach in its promotions. "What's Your Story" contest asks consumers to submit their own experiences through the Snapple website. The grand-prize winning spot is played out by the bottles and premiered as a Snapple commercial. Entry required applicants to provide demographic information, which in turn arms Snapple with more information on its target market. Here's a Snapple fan spotlight video from a 'cap creation' campaign.
Broadly speaking the Mystery Shoppers for RTD Iced Tea can be defined as college students and young professionals between 18-34 years of age, living in urban/sub-urban areas who are health conscious, look out for all natural, organic products and want to avoid soda, artificial flavors as part of their daily meals. They love to experiment with new flavors and patronize a unique blend which best expresses their personality. They love to hang out with friends and instantly share their fun experiences on social media platforms. Presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc. is a must to engage with these buyers.
Since the RTD Iced teas are sold through convenience stores, gas stations and local restaurants, brands remain shy on platforms such as search engine marketing and year-long TV advertising is rare to spot. Having said that some RTD brands even use traditional couponing to promote point-of-sale promotions to attract some value seekers such as Gen -Xers and Mothers.
But a huge limitation of Big Data is that it alone cannot help you to innovate for future. So, companies use qualitative research such as Focus Groups, Ethnographic Studies, product home reviews etc, in conjunction with quantitative research to unfold the insights of the mystery shoppers. Ethnographic study can help to define qualitative aspects of the product consumption such as the tea-ness, sweetness, chug-ability (sip/gulp), worth, flavor, variety, health, nutrition etc in addition to a data-driven category trend such as a carbonated-iced tea or sports-iced tea blend. So, brands first need to build a basic market infrastructure and hit consumer bulls eye by digging hidden insights with the help of quantitative and qualitative research tools.
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