The ever important path to purchase - CPG

As consumers, we follow a decision tree to make a final buying decision. There may be many different kinds of decision trees we use, but to be clear, we all have them for every single thing we can purchase.

Understanding the tree is critical to understanding the root behaviors that drive.... well, everything.

The way I break this down is to include a category I like to call influencers. Influencers don't drive the purchase decision, but are adjunct to the decision process. Influencers can be very powerful to each of us - and it really depends on the impact of the influencer.

For almost every category of items, there is a root path to purchase. For Consumer Packaged Goods (stuff we eat), we have some primal stuff at play. Depending on the household, there may be staple products that are critical. Which brand of staple products are purchased we will be talking about later.

For more durable goods, the decision matrix gets far more complex. We will cover this in a future blog.

Lets consider Consumer Packaged Foods for now.

A short (but not exhaustive) list of the influencers are:

• Economic. Does this product offer the value proposition that I require?
• Fit. Does this product fit inside my particular trip mission?
• Familiarity. Can I trust this brand? Did my "aunt Susie" recommend this? Did a celebrity I care about endorse this?

A short (but not exhaustive) list of the triggers are:

• Contextual. Does it "sound good"?
• Smell/taste. Assuming samples, does it appease your palate or other discriminator?
• Value. Is this just too good to be true?

Adding to the confusion is that shoppers are more likely to be on a "trip mission". For example, I am going to buy "x,y, and z" to fulfill "a, b and c". So not ONLY do merchants need to keep the items they see of value to their audience, they ALSO have to interrupt the trip mission. WHEW! No wonder grocery stores have crappy margins.