Shopper Typology in Colombia

Supermarket in Bogotá, Colombia (photo credit: P. Verdin)

It is a fact of life that people seem to spend a lot of time on shopping for various things such as food, clothing, household goods, personal and health care products and other items.  Each person approaches shopping with a unique set of attitudes.  Just ask yourself these questions: 

• Do you enjoy shopping?  Do you think shopping is a chore?  Do you think shopping is boring?

• Do you make a shopping list before setting out?  Do you make purchases on impulse?  

• Do you care which stores you buy from?  Are there specific stores that you prefer?  Do you go to whichever place happens to be on the way?

• Are you loyal to specific brands?  Or do you switch brands for the sake of variety?  And would you try a new brand just to see what it is like?

• Do you shop around for the best prices?  Or do you value your time more?  Do you look for items that are on special sale or promotion?

• Do you believe that advertisements are truthful?  Do you rely on them?  Or do you ignore them?

You may personally take some of these questions for granted.  But advertisers are certainly very interested in the answers to these questions, since they need to know how to position and publicize their products and services to shoppers.

In this note, we will present a typology of shoppers based upon some data from the TGI Colombia study.  This is a consumer survey of 7,035 respondents between the ages of 12 and 64 conducted by IBOPE Colombia in 1999.  Since our subject is shopping, we will look only at those respondents who have identified themselves as the principal shoppers in their households.  Thus, there are the people who do the bulk of the shopping for food, clothing, households products, personal care and health products in their households.

Within the TGI Colombia study, the respondents are shown a series of attitudinal statements about shopping and they are then asked if they agree or disagree with these statements.  We took these responses and constructed four different cluster groups by the method of K-means clustering.  This construction results in the partitioning of the principal shoppers into four mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups, such that the answers within each group are similar and the answers between groups are dissimilar.  In the table below, we show how each group responded to these attitudinal questions.  Each table entry represents an index, which is 100 times the percent of people who completely agree in that group divided by the percent of all principal shoppers who completely agree.  So an index much less than 100 means that fewer percent of people in that group agrees with that statement than among all principal shoppers; conversely, an index a lot greater than 100 means higher percent of people in that group agrees with that statement than among all principal shoppers; and an index of 100 means that the same percent of people in that group agrees with that statement as among all principal shoppers.

Indices for %Completely Agree with Attitudinal Statements, by 4 Groups

(source: TGI Colombia, IBOPE Columbia)

Here are some summary comments for these four groups.

• The people in Group 1 are quite unresponsive to any of these statements.  It is as if they regard the task of shopping as a simple chore not worthy of any deep thought.

• The people in Group 2 are variety-seeking brand switchers who will buy on impulse based upon  sales and promotions.

• The people in Group 3 are highly sensitive to price and will look for special offers and promotions.

• The people in Group 4 are brand-loyal, well-disciplined, price-sensitive and promotion-sensitive.

To see what type of person fall into these groups, we show the demographic characteristics in the next table.  Again, we are presenting indices here.  According to this table, the first group would be characterized as having more affluent males, the second group has more young females, and the fourth group has more lower-class elderly people.  The third group is a little bit harder to characterize in terms of these demographic characteristics.  This is not too disturbing, because demographics should not be the sole, or even principal, determinant of consumer shopping behavior.  In this case, we don't need a set of demographic surrogate variable to guess at shopping behaviors and attitudes --- we have those shopping variables themselves!

Indices for Demographic Characteristics, by 4 Groups

(source: TGI Colombia, IBOPE Columbia)

Shopping Center in Bogotá, Colombia (photo credit: R. Soong)

In the next table, we list the indices for the shopping venues that are used by these groups of principal shoppers.

Indices for Shopping Venue Visited in Last 4 weeks, by 4 Groups

(source: TGI Colombia, IBOPE Columbia)

The shopping typology presented here is usually the beginning, not the end, of a marketing plan.  For a specific product or service, you have to decide which groups are the appropriate targets.  Then you can determine who these people are in terms of demographics (male/female, young/middle/old, rich/poor, etc).  You can also tell which attributes are key (price, promotion, convenience, brand loyalty, newness, etc).  You can then formulate an appropriately themed advertising/marketing campaign.  You can formulate a media plan to reach them through the optimal media choices (e.g. print, television, radio, outdoor, in-store, etc).  You can bring on point-of-sale promotions at the shopping venues that they are most likely to visit.  The creative possibilities are limitless ... 

(posted by Roland Soong on 2/28/2000)

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