70% of all purchase decisions are made in-store?

70% of all purchase decisions are made in-store.

This statistic is widely used by the industry. It cropped up several times in presentations at the Institute of In-Store Marketing Summit.

CPG’s use it:

“At P&G we like to talk a lot about how 70 percent of all purchase decisions are made at the shelf, at the First Moment of Truth. So what that is saying is that for all the Billions of dollars we spend on traditional media, only 3 out of 10 consumers actually know the product they are going to buy when they walk into the store.”

It comes from a piece of research done by POPAI in the US. Quote: “The source regarding purchase decisions in mass merchandisers is our “1995 U.S. Consumer Buying Habit Study”.”

Its broad scale applicability is highly questionable. Even just a cursory evaluation throws up any number doubts. It certainly can’t be true for all categories – diapers and skin-care spring to mind. Any Mom with kids will know that much of their food purchase is pre-determined. What about all those people who take their coupons to the store? On the other hand it might well be true for some shoppers (price-driven?) and some categories where promotions prevail.

What it also perhaps muddles is a lack of a pre-determined shopping list with no brand preference. A shopper might not have a shopping list and just goes for the weekly shop, decides what to buy in-store but that doesn’t mean she has no pre-determined preference that kicks-in when she decides to buy baked beans.

More research perhaps?