What is an Accompanied Shop?
An accompanied shop (or assisted shop or shopalong) is where pre-recruited respondents walk around a shop just as if they were carrying out their usual shopping. They are joined by a researcher who observes everything, from how they approach the store and what they look for to what they like and dislike. It’s a way to gather detailed insights into consumer behaviour during the shopping process.
During the accompanied shops, interaction is kept to a minimum to ensure customer behaviour remains as natural as possible, although there’s usually a pre and/or post-shop interview to get to the bottom of their decisions and actions.
Whilst group discussions and face-to-face interviews are a great way to understand your customers thoughts and opinions, joining them on a retail accompanied shops can help you to gain additional insight which you otherwise may not be able to achieve from a focus group setting.
Accompanied shops enable you to get underneath your customers skin and observe how they behave, where they go, what they buy and why – which means you can generate deeper shopping insights in order to make truly informed decisions.
More and more retailers are beginning to understand the power of accompanied shops and the value that they can provide. Accompanied shops enable researchers to witness the entire shopping experience first hand, observing everything from the products the respondent is drawn to and the questions they ask staff to what they think of the store layout and their opinions on different offers and promotions.
Not only that, but accompanied shops also provide you with the opportunity to observe in-store decision-making processes and uncover what customers think and write if the store is doing well and how they think it could improve, giving deeper shopper insights than ever before and giving you the tools you need to transform your customers journey.
Common Questions about Accompanied shops?
- What are you planning to buy today?
- Are there specific items you prioritise?
- How do you decide what to buy?
- What catches your attention while walking around?
- What factors influence your decisions to choose one product over another?
- How much does pricing impact your decision?
- Are you loyal to specific brands?
- Does the product’s appearance or packaging influence your choice?
- Can you describe our thought process when choosing between similar products?
- How satisfied are you with your shopping experience today?
A successful Accompanied shop session with Focus People!
Focus People can certainly assist you with finding respondents for this type of research. Simply prepare a brief of the type of people you need us to find for you along with how many people, which stores you would like us to send people to.
In some instances you do need approval from the store to undertake this type of research.
We then need to arrange a meeting spot for you to meet the respondent. Here are some suggestions:
- Meet at a cafe that is close by to the store you wish to conduct this research so you can have a quick chat first.
- If meeting at a supermarket ask them to meet you at the Customer Service desk (all stores have one).
- Meet out the front of the store
We need to decide on this upfront so that we can give out this information to respondents as soon as we book them in. We will send all of this information to them in their confirmation email and again when we confirm them the day prior to the accompanied shop.
It is a good idea to give the respondent the phone number of the researcher along with the researchers name. The researcher will also be provided with the respondents contact number as well (just in case there are any issues with finding the respondent at the store).
Reach out to Focus People for a quote on this type of project, and we’ll guide you every step of the way.
