Shopper marketing blog

Shopper Reviews for Moisturisers - Quality vs Quantity

Posted by Paul on Jan 30, 2024 3:27:11 PM

This time we are looking at the face & body moisturiser category in the UK. We particularly want to look at which companies and brands are doing well i.e., have good positive reviews that are up to date and will influence shoppers and those who need to be a bit smarter.

We are also keen to understand more about moisturisers from a shoppers' perspective. What do they say about the category, what language do they use to describe it, and how do they see the relative merits of brands?

To do this, we have gathered and analysed all the reviews on facial and body moisturisers in the top UK online supermarkets since 2020. We processed them through quality control, removing all the unhelpful “!!!!!!!!” etc., that some reviewers like to use, then pivoted, tabled, graphed, AI-analysed, discussed, and debated. Finally, we came out with what we think are the more interesting points about the moisturiser reviews in UK supermarkets.

We focussed on the top 6 brands analysed, selected by the total number of reviews found across ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, and Ocado for 2020 - 2023.

  1. Brands with more reviews, have lower quality reviews
  2. The most popular Shopper dimensions for moisturiser are:
    1. Absorbs Easily – Doesn’t Absorb easily
    2. Not Greasy - Greasy
    3. Smells great – Does not smell Great
    4. Good for Dry skin – Not good for dry skin
    5. Good for Sensitive skin – Not good for sensitive skin
    6. Good for Lines/wrinkles – Not good for lines/wrinkles
    7. Good to Soft skin – Not good to soften skin
  3. Despite having lots of reviews all brands need new reviews on the majority of SKUs.

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Topics: FMCG, Rating and Reviews, Shopper Insights, Insights

New Year, New Products? Get off to the best start by utilising reviews

Posted by Paul on Dec 13, 2023 8:00:00 AM

Launching new products in the New Year can be quite an adventure, it's no secret that the road to success for any NPD is filled with many bumps and mostly arrives at a dead end. As reported by Harvard Business Review, a staggering 90% of new products face failure within their first year, despite the substantial investments by FMCG manufacturers in R&D, marketing, and advertising.

To help your new products have the best possible start in the New Year, we'll explain the crucial role of consumer reviews. Here are four compelling reasons why securing a good number of consumer reviews as early as possible is essential for the success of your new offerings.

PS For even more on why reviews are critical for NPD, see our post 10 Reasons why Shopper Reviews are vital for Successful New Products.

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Topics: Supermarket, Grocery, FMCG, NPD, Shopper Marketing

Bridging the Review Gap in UK Grocery: A wake up call to Brands

Posted by Paul on Oct 10, 2023 8:50:41 AM

When it comes to the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, many brands may feel confident about their customer reviews. However, our comprehensive analysis shows a different reality, highlighting a significant and often overlooked gap in consumer feedback.

With a staggering 85% of FMCG products in top UK supermarkets needing new reviews, this isn't just a minor issue—it's a business-critical concern. So, let's dive deeper into the data, look at a leading example from the industry, and explore the tangible opportunities that await brands willing to bridge this gap..

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Topics: FMCG, Rating and Reviews, ecommerce, Shopper Research, digital shelf

What makes the best consumer product reviews?

Posted by Paul on May 5, 2023 9:00:00 AM

Simply having 30 product reviews with an average rating of +4 is not enough to guarantee success. In fact, it's less than half the job. To truly convert shoppers, you need to have at least 30 high-quality reviews on every retailer site, and they need to be "fresh" - less than 6 months old. But it's more than this, it's about the ones that get read, the latest ones or the "Top 3" as we call them. These reviews must be positive and have influential text to maximize your conversion rate.  To achieve this, you need to work with a partner who can deliver high-quality reviews across all retailers.

After analyzing the Top 3 visible reviews for all products on Ocado's website, our data revealed that 52% of the reviews are 5-star, but only 18.3% are less than six months old. However, even those recent reviews may not be the most influential ones. To create the best reviews, they must not only be 5-star and fresh but also contain the right components. So, what makes a review text more influential?1

1 From Quality in Product Reviews: What Technical Communicators Should Know Jo Mackiewicz - 2015

In this post we look at all 6 components of influential reviews and provide examples of "the best" of each. We will then go on to answer two vital questions:

- How do you know if you have the best reviews?

- How do you get and maintain the best reviews?


NB All example data and reviews for this post are from Ocado data collected at the end of April 2023. All reviews are from the Top 3 latest reviews available on each item ie those most likely to be read by the shopper.

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Topics: Online, Grocery, FMCG, Rating and Reviews, Shopper Insights, Ocado

10 Reasons why shopper reviews are vital for successful new products

Posted by Paul on Apr 27, 2023 8:30:01 AM

Are you preparing to launch new products? Harvard Business Review reports that 90% of new products fail within the first year, despite significant investments in research, development, marketing, and advertising.

To improve your chances of success, it's important to obtain consumer reviews as soon as possible. Here are ten reasons why consumer reviews are crucial for all new grocery products:


 Reasons why shopper reviews are critical to new products are:

  1. Answering for shoppers: "Will I like it?"
  2. For instant shopper credibility
  3. You look like a bestseller
  4. Shopper read reviews for products they don't know
  5. The in-store opportunity
  6. Reap long term benefits
  7. Increasing popularity of reviews with shoppers
  8. Your competitors are growing reviews
  9. Actionable insights
  10. Avoid early delists
 
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Topics: Supermarket, Grocery, FMCG, NPD, Shopper Marketing

Amazon number 2 in UK for online grocery, Getir leads Q-Commerce

Posted by Paul on Feb 28, 2022 7:47:50 AM

CheckoutSmart create groundbreaking online grocery shopping tracking service for FMCG brands & retailers in the UK

Today CheckoutSmart launched its online grocery shopping usage tracker as part of its SmartResearch services. Using feedback from thousands of grocery shoppers each month, CheckoutSmart will track the usage of the online grocery supermarkets, Amazon grocery, Food Aggregators and Q-Commerce all in one place.

This will allow brands & retailers to:

  • Track the scale and trends of each grocery delivery sub-sector and the players within them. 
  • Make decisions about their investments and the relative importance of each player
  • Use the data to engage with their businesses in discussions about the prioritisation of channels and the resources required.
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Topics: Online, FMCG, Tesco, ecommerce, Shopper Insights, Shopper Research, Amazon, Q-Commerce

Shopper Marketing: Trends in Supermarket Ratings & Reviews

Posted by Paul on Sep 21, 2021 7:55:05 AM

One of the biggest changes for Shopper Marketing teams in the last 18 months has been the meteoric rise in Online grocery shopping driven by the shopper's needs arising out of the Pandemic. In turn, this has brought focus from brands on their reputation on the digital shelf in the form of product reviews, but many brands are disappointed by what they have seen. To help, we launched our SmartReputation solution which works with ordinary grocery shoppers to ensure they are fairly represented.

SmartReputation not only allows your products and brands to get the reviews and shopper feedback they deserve but also monitor the content of the reviews looking for trends. We can also ensure they stay fresh over time (i.e. the oldest is less than 6 months old) as we know this is the second most important factor in driving choice amongst grocery shoppers after having at least 30 reviews. For more, read our comprehensive survey of what drives online grocery shopper choice with reference to ratings & reviews.

To see the trends in supermarket product ratings and reviews we have looked back a year to compare the reviews visible on the Top 6 retailer sites in September 2020 to those in September 2021. Intuitively, you would think that the number of reviews has gone up in that time pretty much universally, well you'd be wrong. In some categories, in some retailers, total reviews by category have dropped dramatically whilst in other categories with good numbers of SKUs they are still well behind the curve in terms of getting fair representation on shelf i.e. the average reviews per SKU which really needs to be 30 or more. 

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Topics: FMCG, Rating and Reviews, ecommerce, Shopper Marketing Agency, digital shelf

The impact of Ratings and Reviews on sell-through rate - webinar

Posted by Paul on Feb 8, 2021 7:34:58 AM

Join Andrew Pearl VP Strategy and Insight EMEA at eCommerce performance analytics company Profitero and Paul Lees our Group Managing Director at CheckoutSmart, as they discuss fascinating original research on grocery ratings and reviews.

This study was specifically undertaken in the UK amongst over 3,700 online grocery shoppers to support the understanding of FMCG leaders and eCommerce teams, by answering their questions:

  • Do online grocery shoppers really bother reading online supermarket reviews?
  • Do they read reviews in our category/sub-category?
  • What elements are more or less important in a product review?
  • What makes a good online product review from a grocery shopper perspective

If you would like a copy of the full 22 page report with all 72 subcategories plus the "6 Golden rules of ratings & reviews" go here

Alternatively if you would like me to talk you through the results and the actions any brand should take as a result then I would be more than happy to do so. Simply use the Contact us form and I or one of the team will come back to you. 

We can help you increase genuine ratings and reviews across all the major grocery retailers (including ASDA, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsburys, Waitrose and Ocado in the UK) but Also Boots, Superdrug, Iceland and Holland & Barrett. In fact anywhere you find ratings and reviews posted onto online sites by shoppers, we should be able to help you. Whether that it in the UK, Spain, Canada or the US. 

We can work with all sizes of organisation, from ones with a few SKUs to ones with hundreds, each one gets our full attention and guaranteed delivery of at last 30 unique and genuine reviews in each reailer.

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Topics: Grocery, FMCG, Rating and Reviews, Shopper Marketing, ecommerce, profitero

Tesco.com shopper research report & SWOT analysis

Posted by Paul on Oct 13, 2020 10:09:57 AM

As a leading digital shopper marketing agency, we are always looking to extend our understanding of the ever-changing grocery shopping environment. Recently we undertook a survey of regular grocery shoppers to understand how they shop on Tesco online and what they think about their experience.

The feedback tells us that there is opportunity for Tesco.com to grow faster but also some significant threats in the wings. Everything we asked has been collated into a comprehensive 20-page report which is available to download. We have pulled the highlights together into a summary SWOT analysis below, together with a few examples of the charts in the download.

If you would like the full report it is available to download here.

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Topics: Supermarket, Grocery, FMCG, Shopper Marketing, Tesco, Tesco.com, ecommerce, Shopper Research

Shopper Marketing Options for FMCG NPD

Posted by Paul on Jul 8, 2020 2:03:03 PM

With all the pressure from retailers and the fact that many brands have postponed their FMCG NPD launches until the second half of the year, we thought it would be helpful to review the shopper marketing options available to support NPD in supermarkets.

For those new to working with the major supermarket retailers in the UK, navigating your way through the variety of shopper marketing options can seem like the proverbial minefield. We've spent the best many years working for FMCG suppliers and supporting them as an agency. With our collective experience, we have broken down the pros and cons of each option in the hopes it will help you identify the best course for your product's unique marketing challenge.

We've grouped our thoughts under the kinds of questions you should be asking yourself when you are planning a shopper marketing campaign:

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Topics: Supermarket, Grocery, FMCG, NPD

Digital Shopper Marketing

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CheckoutSmart is a leading digital shopper marketing agency delivering fast, flexible campaigns against all your goals in any retailer or just one:

  • Actively manage your shopper reputation in all online retailers
  • Create instant shopper action in any retailer, on any sku in the way you want
  • Start a genuine dialogue with shoppers about your products
  • Launch more successful NPD faster and use immediate feedback to improve your mix
  • Excite shoppers with easy to execute, effective virtual on-pack activities
  • Upgrade your understanding of the retail execution within all retailers
  • UK, Europe, US and beyond

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