The Branded Pantry

IBM and Amazon Flow announced new “augmented reality” consumer shopping aids last week.   The new devices add the ability to identify products on shelf using image recognition, to the already available bar code and QR code scanners.  Once a product is identified by image recognition the application can: 

• ·         tell stories about the products                          
• ·         play trailers of movies,
• ·         playing cuts from a CD,
•                        
•             compare prices with other stores
• ·         display nutritional values, allergen warnings or more suitable alternatives or
• ·         rank product features based on a shopper chosen criteria. 

Both applications are in for a hard row to hoe in CPG because of the Gap between the product images and data available from brands or commercial data capture houses, and the actual packaging on the retail shelf.   

ShelfSnap has done the only empirical studies of this gap (The Consumer Relevant Product Image and Data Gap) and found the gap between data and shelf to affect 64% the products commonly stocked on key retailer shelves.   To amplify the work it has already done on entire categories, ShelfSnap recently evaluated the gap for shopping baskets of almost two hundred items ordered online from one of the top two online grocers in the world.  

 We compared what we saw online and the nutritional panel information for the products we ordered each week, to the products we received:

·         63% of the products delivered had packaging that differed from the image online.

·         58% of the items with differing packaging also had differences in the primary nutritional panel on the package vs. what was represented online.

·         The images used by the retailer were supplied by the manufacturer or by one of two top commercial houses claiming absolutely accurate data.  It may have been accurate for the products it portrayed, but it wasn’t Relevant to the products delivered or available on shelf to the consumer.

Without tying products the products that consumers are finding on shelf or in their delivery totes back to the product images and especially the health and wellness data in the mobile or online application brands and retailers will at least sub-optimize the potential of these great new tools, and more seriously may raise the consumer’s ire by appearing to mislead them.  Can anyone say Pink Slime?

One of the mobile application measurement services recently reported that the use of mobile applications generally fell off by over 90% after the initial post-download burst of enthusiasm.

In some ways this dramatic dropoff should not surprise as many low cost, reusable products and services (I-Pod songs, Happy Meal Toys) get scant attention after initial use.

Still, this 90+% decay curve is a staggering statistic and one that should give marketers pause.  Clearly in order to earn ongoing consumer usage an application must be:

• Useful, having some utility meaningful for that consumer
• Easily accessed
• Easy to run (simply input in CPG that means either  a list of options salient to the user or the ability to scan a picture or bar-code for self selection)
• Rewarding.  The application needs to have a high probability of returning data relevant to the person operating the application.

With regard to this last point,  a study run by GS1 UK examined consumer usage of mobile applications  involving consumers attempting to gain product information by scanning or taking pictures of products on the shelf.  The consumers were hoping for information  regarding:

• health and wellness guidance
• promotional offers
• other product information

Over 90% of the usage attempts resulted in either no data or in images/data inconsistent with the actual brand data according to the manufacturer.

I am of the opinion that the only appropriate gauge of product image and data accuracy is one that begins with how relevant the product image and data are to the consumer when they visit the shelf.   If the product displayed in the application is not the product found on shelf then the data fails.  We call such data Consumer Relevant Product Data.  The gap between the data available for mobile and online applications and the package the consumer sees on the shelf, is called the Consumer Relevant Product Data Gap.  

ShelfSnap with two partners, are engaged in a much more in depth and ongoing review of this Consumer Relevant Product Data Gap.  We will extend the research to compare what the consumer sees in their application to the actual product on shelf (vs. the manufacturer’s impression of which product is current).  We will also test how consumer purchase behavior is affected by the disparity.   The report will cover:

• The impact on shopper behavior
  • Sales
  • Dwell time
  • Brand – Banner perception
• The significance of the problem in terms both of:
  • The percentage of products affected by the gap
  • The severity of the differences.

So far our findings indicate that the  gap between the images that manufacturers think are current and the packaging the consumer actually sees on the shelf is well over 50%, regardless of the source of the images used in the consumer applications.   Mobile, online and even product specific paper coupon efforts are handicapped by this impediment.   Of that there can be no doubt.  This is an important set of findings and one of which marketing buyers need be aware.