• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, January 2, 2013

Fewer companies are budgeting for shopper marketing than previously, according to a new survey from The Hub Magazine and shopper marketing consultant Hoyt & Co.

The survey, based on a poll of 314 marketers, showed that nearly 30% of the respondents did not have a dedicated budget for the discipline or applied shopper marketing resources on an ad hoc basis. By contrast, only 16% of respondents in The Hub & Hoyt 2009 survey reported having no dedicated shopper marketing budget.

Shopper marketing encompasses techniques to drive growth by enhancing the quality of the shopping experience and includes in-store displays, retail promotions and events, and package design, among other elements. Increasingly, ad shops are building the practice into their offerings, while many marketers also employ in-house teams for such work.

About 23% of the survey respondents said their shopper marketing budgets were between 4% and 6% of their companies’ total marketing budgets, while 19% reported shopper budgets of 10% or more.

Surprisingly, at a time when many marketers are acutely focused on proving the return on their marketing investment spending, fewer than half of those polled said they measure shopper marketing results. Only a quarter of respondents cited higher sales and ROI as a benefit derived from shopper marketing.

The main benefit, per the survey: better shopper behavioral insights, cited by 70% of the respondents. Improved collaboration with retailers was also cited as a key benefit, as well as better cooperation between sales and marketing departments.

Summarizing the latest survey results, Hoyt & Co. President Chris Hoyt stated that it "highlights a serious bifurcation of the discipline. In essence, what has developed are two types of shopper marketing. One is strategic, planned and collaborative. The other is tactical and opportunistic.” The strategic approach focuses on “the shopper as the area of common interest between retailer and supplier.” The tactical approach “believes the category is the only area of common interest.”

Additional survey results can be found here.

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