70% of purchase decisions are made in-store?



As a follow-up to previous posts on purchase decisions, looking at grocery transaction data from the UK that analysed customers by their deal seeking behaviour a clear conclusion is that there are significant differences by category and brand / product, thus reinforcing the view that a catch-all ‘70%’ statistic is of limited value – in fact, for certain brands around 70% of the decisions appear to be made before entering the store.

For what it’s worth, an average number indicates that 47% of customers are brand loyalists; another 17% are brand loyal but wait until the brand is on promotion and stock up; only 12% are driven wholly by promotions only buying what’s on a deal, and another 18% brand-switchers, driven by variety.

However, across categories there is huge variation. So for example across 5 categories, loyalists can vary from 58% down to 16%. Within a category, the brands may have a loyalty that ranges from 10% to 70%.

Whatever the detail, it’s certainly time to lock that 70% figure away.