The PRISM effect: Measuring in-store marketing impact

In the past, brand marketing was premised upon a single premise that by the time the consumer entered the store and walked up to the aisle, she already knew exactly what brand she wanted to buy. Today, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Increasingly, buying decisions are being made at the shelf. This sea change has elevated the importance of in-store marketing and has given retailers greater control in driving manufacturer promotional dollars. The retailer holds more cards than ever before.

“We would, through jingles and special messaging, influence [the consumer] so that before we got to the store those [buying] decisions were made. But that’s hard to do now,” Peter Hoyt, executive director and founder of the In-Store Marketing Institute, told attendees of Drug Store News’ 9th Annual Industry Issues Summit held in New York in December.

Added Hoyt, “We [the shopper] decide what messages we’re going to receive. We have TiVO, we have satellite radio, we have spam blocking, we have caller ID, we are deciding which messages will get to us. We’re in control far more than ever before. And retailers have a very clear identity of their brand and are beginning, in ever greater numbers and with much more purpose, to market the identity of their brand to the marketplace.”

However, some industry sources believe there is a need for tighter relationships between manufacturers and retailers—both of whom are striving to serve the same consumer, build customer loyalty and bolster sales and profitability. Too much of the emphasis, they say, has been placed on getting on shelf and not enough on understanding what it takes to move off shelf, at, what Procter & Gamble chairman and chief executive officer A.G. Lafley calls, that “first moment of truth,” in which consumers decide which brand to reach for.

“Energy, resources and time that could be devoted to creating a delightful first-moment-of-truth shopping experience often are spent in unproductive discussions over shelf-space, pricing, discounts and terms,” Hoyt said.

Enter PRISM.

The PRISM initiative (read: Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric) is designed to establish a global metric for evaluating the in-store environment as a marketing medium. It allows in-store traffic to be measured by product category, such as in the cereal aisle of a food retailer or in the hair care aisle of a drug store.

According to the In-Store Marketing Institute, PRISM could prove to be a watershed event for the marketing industry, because it would allow the store to be compared alongside television, radio and other forms of mass media for its ability to deliver consumer reach. In effect, it could do for the store what the measurement of gross ratings points did for television, he explained.

While in-store marketing has long been an element of the consumer marketing mix, its potential value as a brand-building vehicle has never been objectively assessed, largely because there hasn’t been a way to accurately measure the total reach of a campaign conducted at retail, Hoyt noted. By establishing a common metric that can be understood by both brand marketers and retailers, this model can eliminate that obstacle.

The project, unveiled in September 2006, remains a work in progress as the PRISM Consortium, a group made up of consumer product manufacturers and retailers, continues to wade through the data.

“We think that knowledge about the number of impressions and the reach…and the closure rates, will help us evaluate in-store marketing both in terms of the lift, the immediate gratification and the long-term equity building,” Hoyt said. “Reaching and engaging shoppers in-store, we believe, will become a mutual goal in the business plans of marketers and retailers. That’s really what we’re trying to accomplish.”