Business challenge
After seeing sales decline in the UK and plateau in Ireland, our client wanted to identify how they could grow their customer base. This required a fresh understanding of homeware and furniture shoppers, including both customers and non-customers, to identify who they are, where they live, how they shop and what they need/ expect from both the online and in-store experience.
Our approach
We ran multiple phases of research:
1.Stakeholder Interviews – 16 interviews with senior stakeholders to understand how a segmentation could help in their role. This also served as the start of on-going engagement.
2.Data Review – our client had lots of data from previous quantitative studies, so we utilised this data to derive an initial shopper segmentation.
3.Quantitative Survey – we carried out an online survey with 4,700 shoppers in UK and Ireland (using a combination of panel sample and client’s customer database). This was to help validate the segmentation we identified during the data review.
4.Qualitative Survey – we conducted 15 focus groups with shoppers who fell into each of the segments. This included WhatsApp pre-tasks, from which we asked respondents to share video tours of their home, talking about the style, what they like/ dislike and any plans to change it in the future, along with other questions about their ideal shopping experience for homeware & furniture. The tasks were a great way to help bring the segments to life and really understand the people behind the segment.
5.On-going Engagement – we have been working closely with the client to develop a suite of tools to embed the segmentation within the organisation. This has included workshops and activation frameworks.
Outcome
The segmentation is now at the core of business strategy with different teams/ functions using it to better targets shoppers, e.g. marketing have developed a strategy to target their 3 core segments; customer experience are utilising the insights to develop the omnichannel experience, with a key focus on online; and fulfilment are developing their offering to ensure they remain competitive in the market.