Retail Innovation Experience @ Procter and Gamble
My team at the McMillon Studio went through weeks of the design-thinking process to pitch a retail innovation experience for Walmart shoppers on University campuses.
Research Methodology.
Our team kicked off this project by understanding what the industry + market looked like in present state- meaning external factors such as competition, economy, and supplier needs. This enabled us to understand what type of quantiative data would be most effective to use for analysis to validate early prototyping. Additionally, we crafted qualitative surveys through Qualtrics to send out to Walmart shoppers to understand ways that they inreracted with physical aisles in store.
Competitive Analysis + Exploratory Methods
We focused on understanding what other large retail players were doing to innovate their Digital + physical storefronts to increase customer loyalty and repeat purchases. Our team sifted through market research reports, online acedemic articles, and trends reports from large research companies.
Qualitative + Quantitative Mixed Methods
Procter & Gamble lended us sales data within their Walmart stores so that our team could understand what aisle displays were working and what was not in terms of capturing customer interest. We also explored demographic data to understand what type of personas were common to P&G products and how we could enhance the shopping experience for those customers. Through focus groups, our team was better able to understand what shoppers were looking for in their in-store experience and how digital trends could play on that. Our team also utilized enthographic research by observing Walmart shoppers in store + conducting face-to-face interviews with shoppers permission- this allow us to set our mindset within the shopper’s experience.
Customer Discovery Insights
Declining birth rates & an aging population.
Less people to shop for and more consumption of personal care. Aging population will become a larger factor in design for large enterprises. At Its current state, digital experience, in particular, is designed for Gen-Z and Millennials, and the older demographic is often left out of the picture. I believe that companies will begin to recognize that these older generations hold a large portion of wealth and that there is a lot of design opportunity left untouched due to hyper-focus on the newest innovations geared at a younger crowd.
Adoption of Sustainable Practices.
Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of why making sustainable choices is important due to climate change. Consumers need reinforcing messaging that they are making the right product choices with clear, simplistic labeling,
Increasing value consciousness.
Consumers seek low prices and avoid discretionary shopping at larger rates. Consumers are presented volumes of information everyday and are increasingly flooded with optionality- value is at the forefront of product choice due to saturation in choice, particularly in the CPG market.
Interconnectedness of product and consumer.
Consumers continue to increasingly expect anytime, anywhere information about products, services, pricing and availability. This insight primarily come from ethnographic study- where we were able to interview shoppers in store after observing their natural behavior.
Comparative Shopping.
There are shifts in investments toward quality and brand engagement. Companies need increasing presence with their customers across a variety of channels due to customer ability to quickly comparatively analyze price, quality, and value.
Increasing ‘citizenship’ in communities.
Consumers are making choices based on wider outcomes that foster citizenship in their chosen or local communities. Brands need to learn to connect to those stories by humanizing their products and messaging.
Main Tools Used
Miro + Figma
Miro was used for early brainstorming of visualizing our solution, as well as, mapping out logic of our Digital experience. Our team did all low-fidelity prototyping within Figma so that we could easily iterate on feedback with each new round of surveys.
Qualtrics
Our team used advanced features within Qualtrics to design a logical survey that captured the goals of our insights. We defined sample size + confidence interval metrics that allowed our team to strive for the most evidence-based survey results possible within our time scope.
Pages + Keynote
Our main presentation was designed through Keynote due to their interactive features and aesthetic design. We utilized Keynotopia templates that allowed us to mockup low-fidelity wireframes for usability testing.