Family Feud has been on television since 1976. It has withstood the test of time because it’s fun (and funny) to try and guess what others are thinking. One time it’s not a good idea to guess what someone is thinking is when you’re trying to market a product. Thankfully, services like the Harris poll can, in about one week’s time, tell you exactly what’s on the minds of your target customers. Gathering this data is easy and key to marketing your product and staying relevant.
Voxus client Digimarc, provider of a new barcode technology that increases the speed of checkout, recently conducted a Harris poll of 2,000 participants aged 18 and up to find out more about retail shoppers’ opinions about their in-store checkout experiences. A short survey conducted over five days confirmed many suspicions and revealed numerous other insights. The cost of about $4K was returned right away when we saw we had “hard data” to serve just about nearly every facet of marketing.
The survey confirmed 88 percent of participants want their checkout to be faster and the majority named slow checkout speeds and long lines as their top complaints. Among the more surprising findings: 30 percent said they feel like a burden to the clerk and other shoppers when they have a full cart. We used this last unexpected finding to create one of our more compelling story pitches: retailers’ most favorite shoppers — big spenders — don’t feel appreciated when they leave the store.
It’s important to note that we struck a balance between benchmarking more obvious statements (i.e., shoppers want their checkout to be faster) with questions you think might surprise your audience (do you feel appreciated?). It’s the wild and never-seen-before data like this that will help a survey garner the most traction and be referenced for many more months come.