Shopper marketing blog

Unlocking Shopper Insights with AI: Reviews analysis & beer

Posted by Paul on Nov 28, 2023 8:00:00 AM

In this article, you will discover how we use AI text analysis to unlock valuable shopper insights and change the way our clients understand customer preferences and behaviours. By the end, you will understand how we go from thousands of text-based product reviews to something as simple and useful as this:

Creating actionable shopper insights has always been crucial for businesses looking to get an advantage in consumer goods. By analysing the text content of shopper reviews using AI technology, consumer goods businesses can gain valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviours. AI (Large Language Model) text analysis allows businesses to go beyond simple quantitative data and understand the emotions, opinions, and sentiments expressed by shoppers in their reviews.

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Topics: Rating and Reviews, Shopper Insights, Shopper Marketing Agency, Shopper Research, Insights

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

Category Retailer Insights Report: Biscuits in Ocado

Posted by Paul on Aug 7, 2023 5:04:50 PM

This is a summary of the work we have done using hybrid AI/Human analysis of shopper reviews of the sweet biscuit category in Ocado. This analysis uses AI to understand what is new and different across huge volumes of text while the experienced human sifts the output looking for category relevance and actionability.

Highlights

  • Ocado has 875k (11.4%) of the 7.7m reviews across all categories in the Top 6 online grocery retailers*.

  • The Category has 4k (1%) of the 421k reviews across all brands in Ocado over 2021-23. 

  • 85 Biscuit brands have reviews on Ocado with an average of 47.8 reviews per brand

  • There is a big opportunity for all brands to improve their review presence in Ocado by getting at least 30 reviews per SKU and the important area to shoppers of the most recent 3 reviews.

  • Looking at individual SKUs in the category (see the Appendix for the full category list) 277 of the 308 listed need new reviews to optimise their sales online and in-store (see “How to get more reviews” below).

*Reports are available for the Top 6 grocery retailers (Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Ocado and Waitrose plus Boots and Superdrug)

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Topics: Grocery, Rating and Reviews, Shopper Research, Ocado, Insights

Consumer insights into Coffee brands from Morrisons reviews

Posted by Paul on Jul 11, 2023 6:20:52 AM

At CheckoutSmart, we are passionate about consumer product reviews. We not only provide up-to-date reviews for brands nationwide, but we also take the time to analyse and learn from them. Reviews offer valuable insights from shoppers, giving us a glimpse into the latest trends and category-specific information. With over half a million reviews from the top 6 supermarkets in the UK alone at our disposal, we have a wealth of information to explore.

Whether it is the latest trends, such as we bring alive in our Moaning March post or category specific insights from the Haircare category, there is always plenty to hear and learn. As we have all the up to date reviews for the Top 6 supermarkets in the UK in our database (over half a million) we have plenty to delve into.

We also use the review data to run our Always On SmartReputation solution, delivering reviews with precision where they are needed by SKU and retailer. This ensures that our clients can have complete confidence in the freshness and impact of the reviews on their brands, alleviating any concerns they may have. This frees up resource to get on with more added value activity as well as reducing the anxiety of surprises when someone in the team spots a series of poor reviews on one of your key packs.

In this blog post, we will be delving into the fascinating world of coffee reviews in Morrisons. Morrisons stands out as an intriguing space for reviews, as they do not participate in syndication like some other retailers. This means that not all products have a significant number of reviews for analysis, potentially causing them to be overlooked. However, in the coffee category alone, we have gathered over 100 reviews for each brand we are examining from the past 2 years. This wealth of reviews provides us with a solid foundation for uncovering valuable insights.

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Topics: Grocery, Rating and Reviews, Shopper Insights, Shopper Research, Morrisons

Food & Drink Trends & Innovations event write up

Posted by Paul on Jun 15, 2023 7:53:58 AM

The event held in London was an intimate and relaxed gathering, featuring a knowledgeable group of industry experts who weren't there to push products, but rather, to share their thoughts and ideas. The audience consisted of a diverse mix of food and beverage manufacturers, food service providers and operators, and a handful of retailers, contributing to a well-rounded and informative day filled with lively conversations and shared insights.

Rather than rehashing the entire agenda, my intention is to provide a condensed summary of the relevant topics, with a focus on novel and significant areas. However, summarising is not an exact science, so my apologies if I missed any insightful comments made by presenters.

The Food industry challenges

My overall summary of the themes for the day:

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Topics: Grocery, marketing, Shopper Insights, Shopper Research

Health and Beauty reviews insights

Posted by Paul on Jun 12, 2023 7:30:00 AM

You can learn a lot from spiders

ML Measures for reviews insight

We believe that there is lots more to understand about ratings and reviews than just "How many do I have?" and "What's my average rating"?

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Topics: Grocery, Rating and Reviews, Shopper Insights, Shopper Research

Why your reviews program should be Always on

Posted by Paul on Jun 6, 2022 7:56:01 AM

If you have been working in eCommerce for an FMCG company for any length of time, then you will already know how important ratings and reviews are to shoppers. In this blog article, we talk about how important it is not only to have product reviews on all the online supermarket websites but also that they need to be kept fresh.

Shoppers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their approach to ratings and reviews and have adapted their use of them over time. Today, to be influenced into buying a product shoppers not only need to see a good number of reviews (at least 30) but critically those reviews need to be recent (certainly less than 1 year, ideally less than 6 months old). To do this you need to ensure you continuously add reviews to your products ensuring the latest ones are constantly fresh.

The top reasons for keeping your reviews fresh are*:

  • 97% of shoppers consider review recency as relevant when considering a purchase
  • 86% of shoppers feel that review recency is more important when considering a product or brand they haven’t purchased before
  • 62% would not purchase a product if the only reviews available were published a year or more ago.
  • The number of reviews displayed by retailers has been growing, for example, the average number of reviews on ASDA.com has grown from 6 to 29 in 2 years
  • As most shoppers only read between 1 and 10 reviews, recent unfavourable reviews can unfairly impact shoppers' perception of your brand or product
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Topics: Grocery, Rating and Reviews, ecommerce, Shopper Insights, Shopper Research, digital shelf

Find out who was the number one online grocery in February

Posted by Paul on Mar 14, 2022 7:50:59 AM

In the second month of their online grocery shopping tracker, CheckoutSmart continues to bring fresh insights into this fast-growing, fast-changing market.

NB The numbers below are deliberately obscured, if you would like to know the answers please contact us.

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Topics: Online, Supermarket, Tesco.com, Shopper Research, Amazon, Q-Commerce

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

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

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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