The client’s question
A pet food company lagged behind on online sales and wanted to develop and optimize an omnichannel strategy to influence online & mobile shoppers along the consumer journey. The client’s internal teams — including e-commerce, brick-and-mortar, brand, and marketing — were each approaching this challenge with a collection unconfirmed hypotheses about the omnichannel ecosystem. The teams were struggling to develop a cohesive strategy to guide each function. Their assignment was to fulfill a company-wide initiative to drive the growth of e-commerce within their category.
Our approach
Just like the omnichannel ecosystem, this study involved several channels — in this case internal departments and functions — and required strong cross-functional collaboration and interaction. SKIM connected all the stakeholders during a kick-off alignment workshop aimed at understanding each division’s hypotheses, objectives, and needs for implementation. A large-scale, multi-phased approach was designed and implemented.
SKIM applied and customized our consumer decision journey research framework to the client’s industry and helped the client focus on the journey types that would be most impactful to them. Using our interactive touchpoint mapping application, we were able to connect the dots between online and offline journeys.
The results
SKIM’s decision journey mapping revealed a picture of the typical path-to-purchase journey across channels, retailers, and even allowed the client to look at specific products within the category. In addition, this research allowed SKIM to look specifically at the disrupted, or “switching,” journeys so that the client could identify key touchpoints and opportunities to influence consumers when they actively looking to change brands or flavors and are most engaged.
SKIM provided the client teams with insights to develop omnichannel strategies at two levels. First, we recommended specific actions on how to cohesively optimize presence in all channels while growing e-commerce. Second, we developed retailer stories to inform retail-specific strategies to strengthen partnerships. The insights and recommendations focused on how to attract, convert, and retain consumers in the omnichannel ecosystem.
Overall, this study gave the client the insights they needed to prioritize marketing resources, as well as closely partner with e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailers to optimize consumers’ journeys. SKIM provided the client with deep-dive insights reports for primary retailers and hosted activation workshops to help client teams develop strategies. SKIMgroup.
