During the course of the pandemic, we have been regularly checking in on how shopper behavior is – and isn’t – changing. One of the trends that clearly started emerging a few months ago is that shoppers have an even greater interest in trying new products than before. This trend has continued in one of our most recent studies (July 28th – August 4th 2020) – with those that “completely agree” I like trying new products continuing to trend upwards.
Figure 1. % of Shopper Army Community that likes trying new products (strongly agree)
But what’s particularly interesting for marketers to note is that while interest in new products is up, shoppers aren’t willing to put any more work into finding them – as demonstrated in figure 2 (those actively looking for products that are new and different).
Figure 2. % of Shopper Army Community that actively look for products that are new and different when shopping (strongly agree)
In short, while shoppers that like to try new products are the majority, only about ¼ of them are willing to put in the work to actively find them. This builds on learnings in recent years that the Canadian shopper is getting “lazier” overall, and points towards a potentially high ROI for marketing investments targeted at making it easy for shoppers to discover new products. Something to think about when planning upcoming marketing calendars – particularly online, where new product launches need to be done differently.