Beyond Point of Sale Data: Getting insight into which touchpoints drive the best ROI for your brand

To maximize their performance in today’s competitive retail landscape, brands need a single, accurate view of the market with instant insight into consumer purchase behavior. In my second post in this blog series, I’ll look at how the GfK Consumer Journey solution delivers that and enables brands to understand how consumers do their research when they buy a new product.

My previous post looked at the purchase triggers in the German television sector as an example of the insights brands can get from the GfK Consumer Journey module of the Consumer Insights Engine. This time, I’ll look at how the solution can give brands accurate, actionable information about how and where consumers research and evaluate their options when they are looking to purchase a new TV.

Our data reveals that the majority of television buyers in Germany do their research online. Most of them used search engines and/ or visited price comparison sites, product review sites or major retailer websites during their purchase journey. The most popular retailers websites among TV purchasers were Media Markt (71%) and Saturn (55%).

Perhaps that’s not so surprising, but our numbers also show that in-store touchpoints still play a major role in the purchase journey. More than half of TV purchasers visited a physical store to research their new TV. Of those who researched their options online, 63% made their purchase in-store. 

What’s more, in-store visits have higher conversion rates than online channels. Around 90% of people who went to a store bought a television in-store, while only 36% of those who searched online made a purchase online. Even in a digital age, in-store advertising and displays play a major role in driving sales.

This sort of insight is invaluable to marketing teams in optimizing their online and offline marketing and advertising channel and touchpoint investments throughout the consumer journey. They will know which channels and brand/product touchpoints consumers use during their search and evaluation of new products, helping them to make better decisions about campaign execution.  

They can also see which consumers considered their brand but bought something else, and why they made that choice. This enables them to plan ahead and decrease lost shopper opportunities. Product category managers and operations departments, meanwhile, can learn about where consumers are researching and buying product, so they can make better stocking decisions.

One way in which GfK Consumer Insights Engine is unique is that it provides all of these insights in a single platform. This eliminates the need for multiple data and insights suppliers and provides a coherent view of your consumer’s purchase journey. I encourage you to try our online Consumer Insights Engine demo to understand how it works in practice and how it could help you make smart, rapid decisions.