SKIMspiration blog

To achieve sales and marketing goals, brands need to know how customers make purchase decisions. But another key element of the consumer journey is often overlooked: the post-purchase experience. KitchenAid, a premium kitchen appliances brand, knew they needed to look beyond the point of purchase to uncover opportunities to build customer loyalty and grow their business globally. 

KitchenAid had previously done some shopper research focused on the US, but needed to expand their knowledge and action plans globally, and recognized that a lot has changed in the way people shop and use appliances since they did their initial research, pre-COVID. 

How could KitchenAid make sense of “messy” consumer journeys and experiences and uncover new opportunities to delight their customers?

Edrington UK is the sales, marketing and distribution business of internationally renowned spirits company, Edrington. The company’s portfolio includes beloved whiskies and cognacs such as The Macallan, The Famous Grouse and Jim Beam. When the pandemic disrupted consumer behavior and paths to purchase shifted more towards digital channels, Edrington needed a data-driven approach to understand the changes and help prioritize its marketing strategies.

How could Edrington adapt to new shopper journeys, and optimize marketing effectiveness to drive growth in traditional and digital channels?

At Quirk’s London, Edrington UK’s Senior Consumer Insights Manager, Rebecca Ramsay, shared the company’s challenges and outcomes from delving into the new path to purchase. Joining her on stage was Stephen Scales, Director, who led the project at SKIM. Stephen detailed the insights and activation approach used, including the decision journey methodology and how our team helped create impact on Edrington’s future marketing strategies.

If you’re facing similar shifts in consumer behavior and shopper journeys, Edrington’s success story is enlightening and inspiring. Here’s a recap of their talk.

TL;DR

• 32% of consumers have cancelled a digital entertainment or fitness subscription only to rejoin later
• Nearly 1 in 10 survey respondents cancel because they could not pause
• Providing pausing options can continue the relationship with the consumer and makes it more likely for consumers to rejoin, or reactivate

In a recent survey of digital entertainment and fitness service subscribers, 72% of respondents considered these subscriptions to be discretionary spending. In an era of high inflation and fierce competition in the digital subscription space, it’s important to explore what’s driving consumer behavior related to churn: 

• Why are consumers cancelling subscriptions to digital entertainment and fitness services? 
• What do consumers expect from their experience with digital subscription services? 
• What does it take for consumers to rejoin after cancelling their digital subscriptions? 

Knowing these insights is key to helping your subscription marketing strategy and to decreasing customer churn. 

The changing nature of health information behavior is challenging pharmaceutical and medtech companies and their insights approaches.

Do you feel the same need to go “beyond the obvious” – the surface – of how patients engage with health information?

The health information behavior framework reveals behavior and unmet needs in more depth and detail than ever before. Drawing from a rich well of academic research, it illuminates the patient experience, as well as the influence of health information on medical decision-making along the patient journey.

Over the past few months, we introduced the marketing implications of health information behavior and discussed the impact of health information behavior on patient experiences.

In this blog, we reveal the practical applicability and outcomes of the health information behavior framework, including the actionable insights pharmaceutical and medtech marketers need: patient types, information tipping points, preferred sources and channels, unmet needs, as well as other potential marketing opportunities.

Read on to learn of two real-world examples of how marketing teams in the dermatology and oncology indications leveraged health information behavior insights to reveal the what, when, why, and to what end patients engage with health information. Discover how this new level of behavioral insights can help you better define strategies which could positively impact the patient journey and medical decision-making.

In the past decades, high inflation rates mostly only challenged smaller, troubled economies like Argentina, Venezuela or Turkey. But with CPI prints now topping 9% in the US and the UK, and 10% on average for the 38 countries in the OECD, inflation now touches us all. And it’s not going away anytime soon.

As vulnerable consumer segments reach the limits of their wallet and more affluent consumers start to feel the squeeze as well, your company is likely struggling to maintain margins and please shareholders.

So, what can you do about this?  In this article, you’ll learn a three-step process to mitigate the effects of inflation on your business. We share proven strategies our clients have adopted to successfully tackle inflation.

TLDR

• Understanding generational differences in subscription behavior is critical to success with FMCG subscription marketing and channel strategy.
• Millennials have more subscriptions than any other generation.
• 80% of Millennials said they subscribed to make their life easier.
• Millennials use introductory offers and often stick with a subscription after being gifted it.
• Keeping Millennials requires a subscriber-centric strategy that includes a subscription hopping portfolio.
• SKIM uncovered insights about subscription use, attitudes, and expectations with 16,000 consumer interviews in five countries.

Whether we are struggling with personal health issues or going through a global pandemic, health information is crucial to modern life. Health information underlies many, if not all, decisions made by both healthcare professionals and patients in the healthcare setting, particularly when it comes to decision-making on treatments.

Healthcare decisions don’t take place in a vacuum. They result from different factors like individual characteristics, the context of a specific health condition, the availability of knowledge, etc.

Therefore, there is great variety in the degree to which people want to know about their health condition, engage with information, and participate in healthcare decision-making processes. This spectrum of behavior can be explained by the notion of health orientation and health information behavior.

How can pharmaceutical companies improve outcomes by exploring this behavioral spectrum?

For CPG brands and retailers, the subscription model offers tremendous opportunities for recurring revenue and consumer connection. But what is fueling consumer choice in the subscription economy, specifically for FMCG products, and how can brands capitalize on it?

It’s tempting to assume that consumers choose product subscriptions primarily to save money (think Amazon’s Subscribe & Save). However, our Subscription Lifestyle research revealed otherwise: in almost every category, consumers, especially those with multiple subscriptions, valued other subscription benefits more than a lower price.

Do you know what drives consumer choice for product subscriptions in your category? Is it convenience, cost, quality, or surprise? Getting it right is critical for your Go To Market strategy.

Our latest research explored consumer behavior and attitudes towards subscriptions across a variety of CPG categories. The results have revealed some surprising factors driving consumer decisions in these categories.

Read on to learn what subscription benefits consumers value most and the marketing implications for your brand

Have you ever opened your door and wondered: “What is in the package that just arrived?” Not since the early days of Netflix, when those red envelopes containing DVDs arrived in the mail, have so many consumers been confronted with a huge question mark at their doorstop.

This shopper phenomenon has been caused by an explosion in digitally enabled subscriptions for nearly every imaginable FMCG and Direct to Consumer category, combined with the popularity of Amazon Prime Subscribe and Save.

How is your company tackling the subscription economy? Do you know how the subscription lifestyle is impacting shopper journeys in your category?

Perhaps your team is already experimenting with a direct-to-consumer offer, or maybe you’re in the early stages of mapping out your subscription strategy.

Either way, it’s important to understand exactly how subscriptions are shifting consumer behavior and perceptions.

Read on for our latest insights on the ubiquity of the subscription lifestyle and five issues your team will want to address to succeed in this channel.

In the early days of COVID-19, the head of the World Health Organization stated it was not only fighting a global pandemic, but also an ‘infodemic.’ Since then, COVID-19 has made it painfully clear that timely and trustworthy information is of vital importance to public and individual health, especially when inaccurate or misleading information is on the rise. Whether tackling a global health crisis or battling personal health issues, credible health information is paramount.

If you work in the pharmaceutical or med-tech industries, you know too well how health information, as well as communications and channel strategies, are of greater importance than ever before.