New Data Reveals Impulse Buying To Be Important Element Of Shopping Behavior

Digital signs give retailers a powerful way to communicate with retail shoppers as they act out on their impulses to buy unplanned-for items.

If there were ever a question about whether or not it makes sense to communicate with customers via digital signs in retail stores, a new survey from the Integer Group and M/A/R/C should leave no doubt.

According to The Checkout, an ongoing shopper behavior survey, nine out of 10 shoppers report buying an item not on their shopping list. The research reveals several reasons why. Sixty-six percent of respondents reported buying off-list items because of a special sale or promotion; 30 percent said they did so because of a coupon offer; and 23 percent said they wanted to pamper themselves.

Digital signs are a great vehicle for retailers to tap into the opportunity this consumer behavior presents. They are a natural when it comes to presenting special promotions. Ditto for coupons. They can be tied into coupon-dispensers or used to display virtual coupons based on QR codes that can be photographed with a mobile phone camera and displayed at the checkout stand. And they certainly are a powerful medium when it comes to presenting products in their best possible light to tap into the desire by many shoppers to pamper themselves.

Craig Elston, senior vice president with Integer summed it up this way: "Our data shows 61 percent of off-list shoppers purchase an additional one to three items. This shows that if you reach a particular shopper at the right moment with the right message --for example, using in-store signage to play into their desire to pamper themselves, it can end with that item being added to their basket."

For retailers, this sort of data is critically important as they evaluate their marketing budgets and make decisions about the return they can expect for their investment in digital signage technology. Without data on consumer buying behavior and how many more items shoppers are likely to buy, calculating an ROI equation of digital signage becomes an exercise focused on identifying costs of competing alternatives and determining which is the most attractive.

With findings like those presented in the latest Integer Group- M/A/R/C research, it is possible to add an evaluation of potential added revenue to the mix. It would be helpful in future studies if these researchers or others could compare the effectiveness of competing signage solutions, i.e. traditional printed signage, Duratrans backlit signs, digital signage and others. Insight into the average dollar value of additional items purchased would be helpful as well.

Even without that data, however, it's not a stretch to say that all things being equal, digital signage should produce the most attractive ROI in retail. After all, it is more responsive to changing messaging needs, is less expensive to use in terms of updating messages, and can be centrally controlled with local input to provide messaging consistency across retail chain locations while still offering an avenue for individual stores to respond to local needs.

The new Integer-M/A/R/C data should motivate retailers to re-examine how they are informing, educating and enticing consumers at the point of purchase. If dynamic messaging on digitalsigns in retail isn’t part of the mix, retailers should reevaluate their approach to maximize their presence at the point where shoppers reach into their back pockets or purses and act on their impulse to buy.

Research Indicates Digital Signage Is On The Right Track

New research from IHS iSuppli indicates growing adoption of digital signage around the world as professionals in the retail, hospitality, healthcare, corporate and government sectors look to the medium to communicate to audiences on the go.
Political watchers probably are familiar with that often-asked question –and even more often asked in an election year: Is the country on the right track or the wrong track?

I would propose that those who make their living communicating marketing messages, ads, information and even entertainment on digital signs should frequently ask themselves a similar question. Is digital signage on the right track or wrong track? In other words, is digital signage a growing, vibrant communications medium that is headed in the right direction as a viable communications choice? Or, is it losing favor?

A new forecast from display market research specialists IHS iSuppli suggests that, indeed, digital signage is on the right track, at least if its adoption is any indication. According to the forecast, digital signage will see impressive growth. Worldwide shipments of signage and professional displays this year will reach 17.2 million units, up from 15.4 million in 2011 and 13.5 million in 2010. For the year, the unit shipments will reach 12.6 percent, and by 2016 they are expected to reach nearly 26 million units, IHS iSuppli forecasts.

The research firm attributes the healthy growth to a few factors, including a greater need for digital signage in public spaces and the rapidly declining price of LCD panels.

The IHS iSuppli forecast also identifies the largest digital signage markets for 2011. They include retail, hospitality/healthcare and government/corporate. The forecast also finds the education, outdoor and control room/simulation markets to be important. 

So why are those with a message to communicate increasingly adopting digital signage? A few reasons are clear. First, digital signage has the unique ability to reach the public with clear, impactful communications when they are on the go. Second, because it's a place-based medium, digital signage communicators can identify areas to locate signs that likely will be frequented by their target audience. For example, a restaurateur has a pretty good idea that the people entering the restaurant have eating on their minds, and the registrar of a college knows students entering the administration building at the beginning of the semester are likely interested in class registration information.

Third, digital signage offers communicators the chance to change messaging frequently –at little to no expense– which makes the medium responsive to rapidly changing requirements.

For all of these reasons and several others that have been well discussed in this space in the past, digital signage increasingly is being selected as an important part of an overall communications strategy.

As this nation enters the political season, journalists surely will report on the public's response to the right-track-wrong-track question. I'm sure each time I hear one of those stories, I am will be reminded of this column and the clear evidence from IHS iSuppli that digital signage is indeed on the right track as a communications medium.

While prognosticating about the results of any of this political season's races is a craps shoot, one thing is predictable. Digital signage as a communications medium will remain on the right track as long as professional communicators need to reach people on the go with their important messages.

Where Does Digital Signage Fit in a World Where TV is Ubiquitous?

If you are like me and drawn to science fiction, fascinated by quirky views of the future, you might remember a mid-1980s TV show called Max Headroom. While the particulars of the series have blurred in my memory over the years, the one thing that hasn't is the ubiquity of television in the society portrayed in the show.

I'm not talking television simply being convenient; in the world explored in the series, TV literally seemed to be everywhere. Not just in homes and apartments, but on the streets, resting on a pile of trash, in the trunk of a car. You get the idea. It was impossible to get away from the blasted things.

That feeling of society being overwhelmed by the tube -now there's an antiquated term- seemed so impossible, so remote, so "sci-fi" just a couple of decades ago. But today, I would argue, we are well on our way to similar television omnipresence.

In May 2011, the Nielsen Company estimated the number of TV households in the United States to be more than 114 million, or 96.7 percent of all households in the country. In January of the same year, Nielsen estimated there to be on average 2.5 TVs per U.S. household. Impressive, but nowhere near ubiquitous -at least not by "Headroomian" proportions.

But TV households don't tell the whole story. According to an online Time Business article published a few weeks ago, Apple has sold 55 million iPads in the two years they have existed. When all media tablets -not just the iPad- are factored in, market research firm IHS iSuppli projects that 275 million tablets will be sold by 2015, or about 16 times the number shipped in 2010.

Getting a little closer to ubiquity? Perhaps, but don't forget about smartphones. A CNN report from July 2011 quotes a report from the Pew Internet and the American Life Project estimating 35 percent of Americans own a smartphone. Another study from research firm In-Stat, quoted in an August 2011 CNET article, forecasts that 65 percent of Americans, some 200 million people, will have smartphones and/or tablets by 2015.

Now, it seems to me, we are approaching the Headroom threshold of TV ubiquity. Granted they are more likely to take the form of a sleek tablet, smartphone or flat panel TV than a beat up set teetering on a mound of broken TVs in an alleyway, but ubiquitous nonetheless.

This sort of near omnipresence would seem to raise a fundamental question for digital signage communicators: What is the value of communicating via a digital sign, if hundreds of potentially competing screens are literally a few feet away in the pockets and purses of passersby?

I would argue digital sign communication is not threatened by the broad availability of smartphones and media tablets, but potentially enhanced in at least three important ways.

First, those portable devices offer a means for digital signage communicators in the future to continue their dialog with their audience once they leave the store, arena, lobby or other venue.

Second, if television-viewing habits are any indication, many people don't replace their TV viewing with online viewing, they complement it. Millions of people today regularly interact with their friends online via Facebook and other social media about a show while they are watching. It's not too far-fetched to envision similar sorts of interaction while in front of a digital sign, depending upon the circumstance.

Third, total viewing time of video entertainment is increasing. Rather than cannibalizing an existing audience, new media devices are driving greater viewing. For digital signage communicators, this increased viewing means it should be easier, not harder to attract people who have demonstrated a willingness to watch media on flat screens.

To me, it seems the Headroom-like availability of screens on the whole will complement the communications efforts of those who market and message with digital signs. Not embracing the ubiquity of these screens and looking for ways to leverage them would represent a major missed opportunity.