Kline & Co. creates new Shop Scout service

NEW YORK — Looking to deliver “an honest view” of the retail environment, Kline & Co. has created a new research tool dubbed Shop Scout: A Mobile View of U.S. Beauty Shopper Behavior, which will be published monthly beginning fourth quarter 2014.



The research service is designed to deliver unrivaled access to shopper opinions and insights captured while they are in the retail environment. Using GPS technology, shoppers will offer an honest view of the retail environment as they experience it while in Kline’s tailor-made geo-fences, as well as feedback on what is going through their minds during the decision-making process to make — or not to make — a beauty purchase. The results will be delivered via an interactive business dashboard.



Kline will team up with a mobile sample and solutions provider to create custom digitized geo-fences based on the addresses of specific retailers in three purchase channels: department stores, mass outlets and specialty stores. Kline will capture and collect data from a large sample of consumers who have opted into its partner’s panel as they enter and exit designated geo-fences (i.e., passive monitoring).



The service will help subscribers to:

• Experience a fresh, innovative way of understanding shopper behavior while consumers are in stores;


• Monitor the frequency and duration of store visits by geo-fence and demographics (e.g., age, gender, race);


• Compare and contrast shopping by geo-fence (i.e., purchase channel) across a milieu of benchmarks;


• Leverage Kline’s sample and geo-fences to create custom surveys specific to their business needs;


• Gauge how consumers rate their shopping experience and satisfaction by geo-fence;


• Quantify how satisfaction levels change each quarter; and


• Visualize the shopping experience with photos from real shoppers.