IN STORE MARKETING

The point of sales is nowadays a real mass medium. The changed behaviour of consumers, who are more and more careful and selective, the competitive dynamics and the less and less effectiveness of the advertising on the traditional mass media - press and TV - have led the point of sales to play a decisive role in the customers' buying process.

Italian and International researches agree that about 70% of buying decisions of consumers take place in a store, where the attention to advertising is much higher than the one to traditional media.
Until few years ago, it was possible to measure the marketing activity, carried out with traditional mass media, thanks to a big amount of data to measure the audience, assess and weigh up the target, calculate the advertising pressure. In essence, it was possible, only for big media, to measure the efficiency and the effectiveness of an advertising campaign through the appropriate research tools. While the investments, more and more important, in stores could not have systems of measurement so complete and effective.

Today, thanks to the evolution of computer technology and to the potential of the web, Chorus Communication is able to provide Companies with new instruments, to measure objectively in a store:
• contacts;
• audience;
• viewers (those who have observed) a workspace, a video, a shelf;
• the time spent in front of a store, a shelf, a video, an exhibition;
• division by sex and age groups of customers;
• the attention span;
• “GRP” (Gross Rating Point – Index for measurement of the advertising pressure) of in-store communication.

The system, which uses a technological platform with sensors for face detection, installed inside and outside the store, enables to evaluate the effectiveness of any marketing instore activity in an objective way and in full respect of privacy, as it does not recognize and detect images of people.

The applications are varied and may include, for instance:
• progects of category management;
• evaluation of the attractiveness degree of shop windows and sale corners in department stores;
• evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of in-store communication;
• evaluation of the effectiveness of shelf and over-the-counter display;
• evaluation of the communication effectiveness for the launch of new products;
• evaluation of traffic flows in different areas of the store.

For example, it is possible to measure precisely the attractiveness degree of the communication in shop windows and measure how many potential customers, once they enter the store, observed the products and bought them. With the installation of the measurement system in three areas - in the shop windows, in the sale area of the product (shop - in - shop) and on the display - it is possible to identify the degree of the attention devoted to communication over the street (shop window), to communication in the sale area (shop in shop) and to the product (display/shelf).

In this case it will be possible to count how many potential and real customers, after passing by the shop window, entered the department store, went to the corner, observed and bought the products.

Mapping the entire process of customer's choice, from the acquisition of the interest to purchase, it is possible a precise analysis of the in-store dynamics, which are completely identical to the common measurement systems, adopted by the major mass media. All this should help to identify the guidelines for an effective in-store comunication and to plan and start the activity, in an objective way, in the most critical phase of the marketing process: the last mile.

In addition, the exact data about the outside traffic, the attractiveness degree of the store, the entering flows and amount of people in the in-store areas, together with the exact quantification of the sell-out, make it possible to measure different indexes that can be processed in a common model and give as a result the index of potentiality of every single store.