• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, September 25, 2014

Cross-channel, omnichannel, multiscreen: Call it what you will. Marketers are scrambling to track consumer across this increasingly fragmented terrain of devices and touchpoints. Integration, seamlessness, connecting the dots: Call that what you will, too. Marketers are trying to knit it all together for themselves.

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that consumers most of all are the ones who need to “connect the dots,” find cross-platform seamlessness, etc. American consumers have been very good at jerry-rigging modern technology to serve purposes the gadget inventors never imagined. How many of use are still emailing articles to ourselves from handsets simply because publishers don’t make it easy for us to save content for perusing in-depth on the screen we like? The same is true for shopping, where people evolved a host of their own cell phone tricks to use in store, from showrooming to sending snaps to spouses from the cereal aisle to confirm this is the brand Junior wants. Marketers have not been able to keep up with and serve the habits people are developing ad hoc out of the technology that has been handed them.

People, perhaps more than marketers, need seamlessness and cross-channel integration. According to a new survey of 1,000 grocery shoppers with devices, for instance, 45% of moms said they craved most the ability to clip coupons and add deals and promotions directly to their store loyalty card. Forty percent of dads agreed. The survey was conducted by Gannett’s local digital marketing company G/O Digital.

The path to purchase is clearly elongated and multiscreened. For instance, the pre-shopping phase of looking for sale items on desktop or device before leaving the house is important to 40% of moms and 30% of dads, but more often the pre-shopping phase is occasional and driven by curiosity about a specific product or category. Interestingly, only 19% of moms and 26% of dads say they go right to the store without prep and intend to look up deals in the venue. But this pre-shopping is critical, as 59% of moms and 51% of dads agree that the sale items they find online strongly influence the supermarket they choose.  

Whether, when and how social networks actually influence shopping decisions has been a controversial issue for years. But when it comes to users interacting with brands, the G/O survey makes clear that Facebook is far and away the place to be. More than half (55%) of moms and 47% of dads say Facebook is the channel they find most useful in interacting with brands, compared to 7% for Pinterest, 5% for Twitter and 1% for Instagram.

But keep in mind that a third or more of consumers say there is no channel they find useful for engaging with food or beverage brands. In terms of actual influence on purchase decisions, consumers seem mixed on the power of social nets. Most say it doesn’t influence decisions at all or that it may be important but is only part of a larger process of research. But again, integration could be an important element in the influence of social media. The Facebook feature that would be most likely to propel a purchase is an offer than can be redeemed at a local store. While 53% of moms agreed this was most important, 41% of dads thought so.

In-store device use is still an evolving habit, however. Only 19% of moms and 16% of dads feel it is very important for them to look up circulars and promotions in the aisles. A larger 36% to 37% of parents say instead that this access is somewhat important and that they are more likely to purchase a product if they find a deal on their handset.      

Localization is key. When asked about the most frustrating part of mobile advertising and promotion for food and beverage items, 35% of moms and 29% of dads both cited most often that promotions are not locally relevant to the products or the prices that are in the store.

I would argue also that it is the local inaccuracy and lack of reliability in local mobile couponing that inhibits the platform’s use. There is nothing more aggravating or embarrassing than presenting a coupon at checkout and having it declined because of its small print provisions or inapplicability to that locale. For mobile couponing in particular, this is an issue. Many coupon-scraping operations are not geo-fencing offers, but pull in anything and everything they can find. This makes for in-store disappointment that consumers don’t forget. The G/O survey suggests that consumers will use mobile promotions if they are confident in the seamlessness of the experience.