Insight and it’s Impact: POPAI Conference

As a proud POPAI partner, Shepper were honoured to be invited to speak at their Summer Shopper Insights Conference. Alongside Outform, Zeal Creative, TeamHaven and Spark Emotions, our CEO Lindsay Forster delivered an amazing presentation on the critical nature of insight for business success. This is an article outlingin Shepper’s key takeaways from the conference.

Refinement over Reinvention – Clare Cryer, Outform

Consumers aren't necessarily harder to impress — but they are more informed, and much harder to fool. Outform’s research has found that a staggering 70% of shoppers now shop seamlessly between online and in-store, highlighting the ongoing rise of omnichannel marketing. In fact, omnichannel shopper behaviour is increasing by 35% each year, showing us just how critical these integrated experiences have become.

Clare emphasized the importance of inspiration and reassurance in-store, noting that:

• 86% of shoppers enter with a clear mission
• 69% are influenced by digital signage
• 81% are more likely to purchase after an in-store demo

A key point Clare made was about shopper’s comparison behaviour too; when using their phones in stores, many shoppers are using them for price comparison with other similar products. 9 out of 10 say that the ability to easily compare products is one of the most important drivers for purchase. This reinforces our decision at Shepper to embed an automated PriceTrack tool in app to collect product and pricing data to enable brands and retailers to optimise price.

All these data points provide the insight for Outform to create a ‘frictionless’ shopping experience for the customer. “Your presence in a shop should feel intentional,” Cryer added — highlighting the importance of purposeful, intentional retail design.

Providing Empowering Insight – Lindsay Forster, Shepper

Lindsay challenged the industry’s approach to data and performance, emphasizing that traditional systems often fail to meet diverse needs of brands and retailers.

Shepper’s solution? Actionable insight, delivered with speed and precision. Lindsay spoke through key pillars of insight – longitudinal insight used to drive behavioural change, and targeted research to unlock revenue streams.

Through the power of a community of App users across the UK and Ireland Shepper provide rapid, agile data to clients like Marks and Spencer and L’Oréal. Lindsay spoke through two case studies for these clients outlining how rapid, simple insight is critical for both brands and retailers. Shepper offer completing contrasting products to enable this insight – Marks and Spencer use our Mystery Shopping capabilities, and L’Oréal use more targeted, instore auditing.

Rather than flagging isolated issues, Shepper’s goal is to raise standards across the board and provide their partners with valuable information.

“It’s not about one little bad thing, this behavioural insight isn’t to beat someone with a stick — it’s about how you present insight to drive brilliant execution.”

With unpredictable data visibility, particularly in convenience, described by Forster as “the wild west”, Shepper’s data and insight provides brands and retailers navigation toward consistent, high-quality retail experiences for customers.

Field Team Management – Tamas Kiss, TeamHaven

TeamHaven is a mobile-first platform focused on field team management, data capture for POS, and real-time reporting. Its mission is clear: eliminate delays and give teams instant access to the insights they need for POS installation.

Kiss highlighted major challenges brands face, including:

• Displays not being installed correctly on the shop floor.
• High levels of waste and unnecessary cost.
• Lack of insight limiting successful sustainability initiatives

“Yes” or “no” isn’t enough in field team management, it is critical to capture the nuances of in store activation, retail media compliance and POS distribution. Detail is critical for smarter decisions and ongoing improvement.

Energy in the Aisles – Kimberley Upton, Zeal Creative

“The store is your superpower.”

Kimberley addressed a common issue, that brands are building inventory without the shopper in mind. Zeal Creative combats this with an “energy scale” product which has been tested across 100+ activations, helping brands measure and optimize the emotional effectiveness of retail displays.

Kimberley addressed a common issue, that brands are building inventory without the shopper in mind. ZeThis scale measures the ‘passionate energy’ of instore media that creates genuine ‘Zeal’ as well as positively impacts culture. Zeal have used the ‘5Ms’ to create this grading system; Means, Message, Medium, Moment and Motivation.

Brands can access this platform to support strategic thinking in their own activations; this success is also seen in the Cravendale Milk campaign launched by Zeal themselves. 3 months post campaign, they had seen hundreds of thousands of pounds in increased sales, doubled ROAS %, and most notably increased market share in a notoriously saturated market.

The key takeaway from Zeal? Stay true to your shopper’s mindset and use creative tools and data to ensure your activations are resonating with your customer.

The Science of Shopping – Andy Bromley + Will Morgan, Spark Emotions

Spark Emotions brought the power of consumer psychology to the forefront. Their team uses virtual eye-tracking research to study shopper attention and behaviour — a method that helped a major beauty brand refine its skincare launch strategy.

They take the key principles of attention into consideration in their research, including salience (an obvious difference in pattern) and spatial clues like arrows. In the creation of instore media and brand activations, it’s critical to be aware of human responses and therefore what truly engages a shopper.

By identifying what draws attention digitally, brands can reduce risk before launch and mitigate any issues further down the line. Spark Emotions emphasised that their research works best when complements by instore testing too.

Ultimately, Spark Emotions are built to understand why people behave the way they do, and use that insight to shape retail strategy and drive successful campaigns.

Final Takeaway

Across each speaker it became clear that the in-store experience is thriving, and many new strategies are being found to make it more intelligent, intentional, and insight-driven than ever before.