What is POS?

Point of Sales (POS) data tells you what consumers buy as well as when and where they make their purchase. When you calibrate this data with actionable consumer insights, you can maximize its potential in the consumer journey by understanding who the purchasers are, how and why they make their buying decisions.

What is the Consumer Journey?

With the GfK Consumer Journey module of the Consumer Insights Engine, you can generate high-impact insights that answer questions which include:

• What triggers a consumers’ need to purchase?
• What proportion of consumers are upgrading a working product and what proportion are replacing a faulty product?
• Which marketing channels are consumers receptive to at this early stage of the purchase journey?

The Consumer Journey module of the CIE is the only solution that provides a full view of the online and offline consumer purchase journey for the technology and consumer durables industries. Our solution takes you beyond POS* by combining sales data with market research, online consumer behavior data, and advanced analytics in a single interface.

Note: *In the US, GfK does not have access to Point of Sales (POS) data. US data is calibrated using information gathered from a telephone survey based on probability-based sample representative of both mobile phones and landlines. No retailer data is used in the development of the US offering.

In this series of blog posts, we’ll look at practical examples of how this new solution brings brands closer to their customers, allowing them to understand the story of a customer’s purchase from the realization of a need up to early usage. In this first post of the series, we’ll dive into how customers in India begin to buy a new television.

What are the purchase triggers for television shoppers in India?

Although replacing a faulty product is the key reason for over one in three (33%) consumers in India, a quarter of purchases (25%) are triggered by the desire to buy an extra unit for the home, while one in five (21%) of television purchase journeys in India begin because consumers want to upgrade their TV. The remaining 21% are accounted as first time TV buyers.

Similar to a study done in the UK, it’s evident that a certain percentage of Indian consumers are considerably proactive and ready to seek a newer and better product even before the existing one breaks or becomes obsolete (3% bought TV within a year of purchasing a previous one while another 12% had purchased their last TV in the past 1-2 years = so 15% purchased a TV within 2 years of purchasing the previous one).

As we can we see from this data, major tech and durable purchases no longer necessarily have a long lifespan in the Indian consumer’s home. To capitalize, brands need to dig deeper to understand which consumers are happy to replace large appliances at regular intervals and the factors that prompt them to make a new purchase:

Half of the TV shoppers replaced an existing non-faulty product due to a change in personal income or circumstances—which is much higher than what we see in many other markets we track. This opportunity is much larger than the market of consumers who buy a new TV because they are dissatisfied with their current model. Brands should not ignore this. However, it is also worth highlighting that 23% of shoppers are brand loyal, while the majority prefers to try new brands. Customers who are 55 years or older are most loyal to the existing brand they use.

While making their purchase decision, over half (52%) of all shoppers visited a retail store to physically evaluate their different options of TV sets, even though a higher level of 54% conducted their research online. Clearly, even in today’s digital world, the in-store experience has a significant role to play in decision making. In India, one-third of all offline sales were through four key retailers. Therefore, it is crucial that brands are partnering with the right retailers.

Insights from our Consumer Journey module of the Consumer Insights Engine also reveal that while doing online research, chances of TV shoppers buying a particular brand increase substantially if they visit the manufacturer website.

Key insights

Using the Consumer Journey solution, we could quickly identify several key insights that any player in this category can act on, including:

• Around 15% of Indian consumers are highly proactive and ready to actively replace products within two years.
• When purchasing a new TV, brick-and-mortar stores are still a dominant influence in the decision-making process.
• The drop from consideration to purchase varies significantly across brands – some brands lose as high as 80% of their potential customers, while some are able to retain 50% of the customers who initially considered their brand.

These insights can be distributed to the relevant business functions to inform tactical and strategic planning processes where they can make a difference to category performance.

My next blog will drill deeper into which specific touch points consumers interact with when they are looking for a new TV and which are most influential. In the meantime, check out our Consumer Journey demo to discover how we can help your business to make faster, smarter decisions.