Okay, I think we'll get going because I know your time is precious. So thank you for joining us today. You're here to hear about our E-commerce for CPG: Key Consumers and Emerging Behaviors study. So I'll start off with some introductions. My name's Melinda Dinnes. I am a brand and marketing strategist at SLD. I've been with the company for five plus years now, and one of the things I do a lot of is consumer research. If you're not familiar with SLD, we are a strategic design agency. We work with CPG and retail brands, and our mantra is "Think blink." We believe that you have that split second to connect with consumers, and it really needs to be a powerful, emotional connection. So we really focus on making that one second matter. Let's get right into the study. So we asked 2,000 consumers, half from Canada, half from the US, and as you can see here, a nice split of age and income, about their grocery shopping habits.
There were three key questions that we really wanted to understand. So the first was about consumer attitudes and behaviors and preferences. The second was about that grocery shop online on your partner sites and what you can do to get into the eCart more often. And the last was around your own direct-to-consumer strategies for CPG brands. Where are the opportunities that you might not have paid attention to? So in this presentation, I'm going to go through some key facts from the study. We're going to talk about those opportunities to get into the eCart. We're going to look at some grocery shoppers who are really passionate about online shopping, and then we're going to look at some personas to consider for CPG direct-to-consumer plans.
So as a good starting point, we all know that COVID has really pushed people to shop for groceries online a lot more. According to our study, 69% of shoppers either tried online shopping for the first time or increased their shopping. But we wanted to know what else, what attitudes are changing, and where are the opportunities for brands. So let's dive into those attitudes and behaviors and consumer preferences. We asked consumers to tell us, what do you like? Do you like shopping online? Do you like shopping in the store? And 60% of consumers told us that they still prefer to shop in the store, but there are some key groups where this preference is much higher. So looking at people who don't have kids and women, the reason they prefer the store is that they like to select fresh by hand, and they're looking for product discovery. Canadians, in this case, it was more about a barrier to the online
shopping experience where free same-day delivery is not ubiquitous in Canada, so that barrier is driving consumers to the store. And for lower income consumers, this group, interestingly, were the least likely to have changed their behavior during COVID. Very small percentage of them even indicated that they shopped online less, but a good percentage, around 20% of them, saying that COVID didn't change their shopping behaviors, probably because frontline workers are over-represented in this group. So overall, there's really a strong preference for the store. However, when we asked them to tell us, how do you actually shop? It was only 55% who said they actually go to the store. So that 5% gap indicates that whatever's driving people to shop online is really powerful. So here in this chart, we asked consumers to tell us what best describes your shopping habits. And you can see here there's a variety of options, but
55% saying that the store is where they're doing their big shop. Of course, the pandemic has impacted this, so we asked about that, and the big news here is that 48% say, "Not only did I shop more online during the pandemic, but I'm going to keep shopping more online." There is 21% saying, "I plan to go back to the store," but that 48% is pretty seismic.
So we wanted to know why. What do you like about the store? What do you like about online? And when we look at the differences here, on the left-hand side, looking at the store, it's much more about that tactile experience, about product discovery, about the relationship with food. And really interesting is that number three, a lot of people said, "I just like the actual store experience," which I found pretty interesting. And what it sort of suggests is that maybe grocery shopping is a chore that people don't hate as much as you might have thought. Then we look at the online experience, and it's all practicality. We're looking at time saving, and we're looking at being able to shop at any time. Number three, important to note that where free and fast delivery is available, people see it as a real asset, but where it's not available becomes a barrier. So when brands are thinking about their own direct-to-consumer strategy, it's
really important to make sure that you address that issue.
Oh, can't move on until the poll's ended.
So then we looked at some online shopping behaviors. So starting at the top left-hand box here, most purchased items, we asked people to tell us about the last three months. What items did they purchase? Personal care products and household cleaning supplies were the top across all demographics. Least purchased items were baby supplies, meal kits, and alcohol. American consumers are buying alcohol a lot more online than Canadians are, probably because of restrictions in Canada making that a little bit more difficult. When we looked at preferred technology, we see that mobile and computer are really kind of neck and neck But that it's really important to note that about half of consumers are using a mobile device, and so it's really important to optimize those images for mobile. Consumers are searching by product type, but brand name is not far behind, so that is interesting to note. And at the bottom here,
during the shop, we asked consumers to tell us across a number of different activities that they have to take while they're shopping online, what takes them the most time. And while making the purchase at number one is probably a no-brainer, it's very interesting to note that reading reviews, that's what they spend the second most amount of time on. I'm going to come back and talk about that a little bit more later, because that's a really important insight. Then we looked at the sites where people are shopping. So the grocery store site is dominating, with Amazon at number two. Aggregate sites and other specialty shops are really not in the game. So if you're thinking about your marketing spend, you're going to want to focus on those two platforms.
Okay, so 10 years ago, we conducted a study called Packaging in an Online World, and we thought, in 2021, let's go back to this study and let's include some of those questions from the 2011 study so we can compare. And what's really interesting is that did we ever underestimate how much this was going to change. Only 9% of households were shopping for CPG products online in 2011. And in 2021, of course, the pandemic has accelerated this, 79% of the respondents in our study today said that they have at least done some shopping for CPG products and groceries online.
Another interesting thing to note when we compared to the 2011 study is that some of the problems that consumers perceive with shopping online are still relevant today, meaning that we haven't resolved these issues. So hard to research, hard to see the product image, price comparison, cost of delivery, and shipping. Some of these problems are still problems we need to overcome. The challenges that they saw had already been overcome. Website navigation and return policies, consumers today are not seeing these as big problems. So when we're thinking about the grocery shop online, the good news is when we ask consumers whether they're using a list or browsing or a bit of both, 62% are at least doing some browsing when they're shopping online, which is absolutely wonderful news. This means there's lots of opportunities for your brand to be noticed. And more good news is that 79% of shoppers are
shopping both channels, meaning that they're shopping in the store and they're shopping online. They might be choosing one of those platforms more frequently for their big shop and then stocking up in the other. But in any case, they're shopping both channels. And then here, people are open to other ways to shop, so there's a lot of opportunities for brands here. What we hear a lot from our clients is that when, especially when you're dealing with your partners, that you're limited in what you can control. You're given this template. You have to upload information in a certain way. You don't have control over the image. But when we asked consumers about things that would improve the online shopping experience, we discovered that there's actually some opportunities where you do have some control. And I know you're going to say, "Well, we don't have control over certain things here." I'm not saying that you have 100% control over all of these, the
four ones that are circled in black. But I want to show you some ways in which you can address these issues. So we're going to talk about some opportunities around being able to recognize the product that I want, making it easy to find product information, easier to research, and consumer reviews. So let's talk about how in the online grocery shop on those partner sites, you can leverage these four consumer needs to get into the shopper's cart more often.
So opportunity number one, consumer said, "I want to be able to recognize the product I want." So we think this opportunity is around improving visibility. On the left-hand side here, I've got some products where if I'm scrolling on my mobile phone or even on my laptop, I'm not going to be able to recognize the product or the brand very easily because there's not great contrast, the size of the font is really small, and the product imagery isn't big or bold enough. Then on the right-hand side, I've got some examples where we've got a very high contrast, a bold, thick font, that nice size. The product image is pretty simple, larger, not as fussy. So these are good examples of how we can clean up the pack and make it look optimized for not only the aisle of the grocery store, but also for the online shop. And we think that whenever you're doing package design, it's not okay to simply be thinking about one.
You really have to be thinking about both.
One of the things that I've noticed when I'm scrolling through all of these different grocery sites is that a lot of brands are using renderings. And so I wanted to address this because there are some great things about using a rendering. It allows you to pull off a bunch of those claims that you can't see online anyways. You could even increase that contrast or even bump up the size of the font a little bit. But it does come with a caveat. We asked consumers if an item arrives and it doesn't look the way you expected, how you feel about that, and 87% of consumers are bothered at least a little bit by this. So, definitely don't want to stray too much from what the package looks like in that rendering. And just to further this point, I've noticed that some brands are using a two-dimensional rendering. And we think that even if it's a box that your product is coming in, the two-dimensional rendering, it doesn't look real.
It doesn't look like the product I know I'm going to get. And it could create that moment of hesitancy that you just don't want to create online. And one other opportunity is that instead of a rendering, you could potentially use a package that you're using for your commercial shoots. That's another nice clean pack that you could photograph and use online. It's going to look a lot nicer than... Sometimes it's difficult to photograph these products. So those are some opportunities around improving product visibility.
Opportunity number two. So consumers said that being able to find product information such as sourcing and nutritional information more easily would improve the online shopping experience. And something that kind of surprised me scrolling through sites is that a lot of brands are not filling in these product descriptions and not making use of the opportunity to add additional photos. So I've shown you a good example here of a brand that has not only included a product description. Sometimes I see this as empty, sometimes I see we've got a little blurb about the brand. But here we've got a little blurb about this particular product with information that would be covered by those claims on the front or the back of the pack. Really easy to find this information. And then they've also added in some additional photos where they were able to do that, creating that romance, that story, some appetite appeal.
So it's really important to be maximizing every area where you can tell your product story on every platform. Don't treat this as an afterthought. Consumers really want to find this information, so make sure that you're giving it to them.
So I promised I would come back to reviews, and so here we are. And of course, you don't have control over reviews on Loblaws or Amazon. So I wanted to talk about where you can address reviews. And before we get into that portion of this segment, I wanted to talk about how important they are. So earlier this year, we conducted a study that we called Deep Real: Strategies for CPG Brands in the Age of Misinformation, which we will actually share that study with you in an email after this webinar, so you can dive into it if you want some more information. And the purpose of that study was to really understand where are consumers finding information, what do they trust, what are they skeptical of, and how can brands build trust with their consumers? And this chart here, we asked them, "Rate how truthful you think the following information is." And online ratings and reviews outperformed everything else.
Really interesting to note that at the bottom of the chart there, social media influencers and celebrity endorsement really not performing that well. So if you're thinking about your marketing spend as a whole, looking at online ratings and reviews, maybe not that glamorous compared to a celebrity endorsement, but it has a lot more clout with consumers. So now to talk about how you can do this to address the online shop. So I just wanted to mention that when you're shopping online, it's pretty easy to open up another browser window or to grab your tablet or to grab your phone and search reviews while you're shopping. So even though reviews on your own site, you might think that that's not relevant during the online shop, consumers do have that ability to navigate to another site and go back to their grocery cart. So we think it's super important to be activating reviews on your own website. So here we've got Pampers.
They've allowed consumers to rate their products over four different qualities. And if I'm a consumer, I'm a new mom, I'm looking for the best wipes out there. If I go to a competitive site and I don't see any reviews, oh, here we've got 500 five-star reviews. That's going to hold a lot of weight with me. And the other opportunity around reviews is on social media, of course. If consumers are making comments, whether positive or negative, it's very important to respond to them, especially when you're dealing with younger consumers, really, really looking for that two-way engagement, and that will really build trust with your consumers. So where you are able to control reviews and to respond to them, we think it's really, really important.
So opportunity number four, consumers said that they wanted it to be easier to research before they shop. And here is where your own website and content strategy comes into play. So Rémy Martin is a brand that does a really beautiful job when it comes to their website and content strategy, talking about the product history and where they're growing their grapes and their partnerships. So of course, this is going to be different for every brand because the platforms that you use are going to depend on your consumer. But making it possible to find out all kinds of information, it's really, really important to tell your product story wherever your consumers are going to be.
So there's a couple of other opportunities. Those are the first four, coming from those top seven consumer needs to improve the online shop. So we also asked consumers what was important to them when they were looking for a new product. And this one actually kind of surprised me because I would've thought that product benefits would've been number one. But it turns out that size or format fits my needs, and this was true across all demographics, was the number one concern. So what that suggests is that consumers, when they're looking for a new product, they have a particular use in mind. And so if you can maximize the variety of formats that you have available on all these partner platforms, you're just giving yourself that little bit extra opportunity for that consumer who's looking for a new product to choose your brand when they're looking for that particular use.
The last opportunity I wanted to talk about when it comes to the grocery shop on these partner sites, we asked consumers about the biggest drawback to online shopping. And if you look at the left-hand side, this is the overall sample, who said that being unable to choose fresh by hand was their biggest concern. And product discovery, this was a concern for them, but not as big as when we look on the right-hand side, when we segmented by income. Higher income consumers are really bothered by product discovery being something that they can't access online when they're shopping for groceries. So this is an area where we think having some conversations with your partners, because your partners are still figuring this out as well. This isn't a situation where everything is set in stone. And I've got Sephora up here as a great example of what it could look like. Maybe at the end of your grocery shop, you can select two free samples.
If you've purchased something on Amazon, you may have had the experience where a week later you get a related product sample in the mail delivered to you. So we think there are some opportunities to get samples to people in the mail. And this is a conversation to have with your partners because consumers are still really looking for that product discovery online. So just to reiterate our six key opportunities in terms of the grocery shop on your partner sites, we think you need to improve product visibility, maximizing the product descriptions everywhere you possibly can, engaging in two-way conversations with reviews, both on your own site and in social media, and maximizing information across all channels through content strategy and through on your own website. Increasing those formats is a really easy win, and enabling product discovery. Really interesting to see that, looking at product visibility, I'm looking at the poll.
It'd be great if you guys could respond to the polls. I'd love to see what you think. Product visibility is looking really strong here.
Okay, moving along. I wanted to look at, we've told you who is really passionate about shopping in the store. Now I want to tell you about who is more active in shopping for groceries online.
So interestingly, 10 years ago, women were a lot more interested in shopping online than men. And now the tables have kind of turned, and looking at this chart, we asked consumers to tell us, have you purchased items that you would purchase at a grocery store using any of these platforms? And men are more active across all compared to women. Subscriptions, home delivery, online buying groups. Really interesting to see that men have overtaken women when it comes to activity in online shopping. And here are the key opportunities with men. So starting on the left-hand side, these are the items that men are most likely to purchase in their grocery shop. And there's some interesting opportunities around subscriptions. Men are really interested in subscriptions for those everyday luxuries. I think Dollar Shave Club, we all know this brand, great example, but it could be craft beer, it could be coffee.
So they're looking for something that they consume on a regular basis and having it delivered to them, including some product discovery. Then the center image, just important to know that whenever there's a new platform or new technology, men are going to be there first. And then on the right-hand side, men really value same-day delivery that's free. So really important, if this is your consumer, that's got to be there. Another group, maybe unsurprisingly, that are over-represented shopping online for groceries are parents. Looking at compared to children, the big shops online, parents are doing a lot more of that. And people without children are shopping mostly in-store. And obviously parents, really time-pressed or driven by convenience. But what was interesting to note was that parents, especially those who are a little older, the 34 to 44 group, are also really concerned more than any other consumer group about causes.
They want sustainable, they want local products, they want organic products. And we think there are some opportunities to partner with programs like Loop or to partner with independent brands when you're thinking about your own e-commerce strategy to address those needs. Those are things that parents are really interested in.
So the last group that I wanted to talk about is the high income group. And if you look at the bottom left-hand corner, just wanted to call out this really big discrepancy between the total sample and high income group. So 48% of the total sample said they shopped more online and they're going to continue 20% more in the high income group. And the big story is that they want more of everything. They want an experience. So not only are they looking for more product discovery, which we already talked about on the bottom right-hand side, they are looking for bulk. They are going to use voice command. They want beautiful package design. They are more interested than any other group in becoming brand ambassadors. So they're really looking for a whole experience from their online shop. And so we think this is where lifestyle and that content strategy really comes into play. Here's a couple of examples of brands,
Highsnobiety and Goop, where they're often featuring CPG brands and some influencers around food, that providing a much more immersive experience that's really, really rich is where you're going to engage with high-income consumers.
Okay, so now we're going to leave the grocery shop on your partner sites behind, and we're going to talk about CPG brands and your own direct-to-consumer strategy. Unfortunately, I have to give you some tough love here. So we asked consumers, "What would influence you to shop at a CPG branded site?" And the top three were all around price. So unless you're going to offer a 30% discount across the board, consumers are not going to shop your site for the same products that they can get at the grocery site. We know that the reason they're shopping online is to save time. So asking them to spend more time is a tough ask. The other bad news is that right now there's very little activity compared to the grocery site and Amazon, with the exception of Gen Z. So I am going to talk a little bit more about that in just a minute.
I wanted to talk about the barriers that consumers told us that they're experiencing in their online shop, and I think the top three here are really the ones that are most important to think about. So delivery fees, lack of access to same-day or fast delivery, and product discovery are all things that we need to be considering when we're planning for our own direct-to-consumer strategy. I do have good news. So when we asked consumers to tell us what best describes your shopping habits, there were a couple of interesting segments here that we think CPG brands could leverage for a direct-to-consumer platform. So I'm going to talk about that dark gray bar first. 27% said that they mostly shop in store, but they go online to find specialty or hard-to-find items. And then that blue bar, consumers told us that 13% of them mostly shop in store, but they go online to find items that they need for special
events. So we think there are some great opportunities for CPG brands with these three shoppers, the specialty item shopper, the event shopper, and Gen Z. So I'm going to get into these demographics, and I'm going to show you some examples of brands who are already targeting these consumers. So starting with the specialty item shopper. This is not by any means a complete list of all the different persona groups you could target, but these are the ones that the study highlighted, so that's why they're up here. And you may have some others that pop to mind depending on your brand. So foodies who are looking for that special ingredient for that special recipe. Looking at the poll here, a lot of customized products, indie brand products, food ingredients for special recipes, so kind of across the board.
Men, we already talked about this, who are looking for those unique everyday luxuries, especially in a subscription model. Parents looking for local, independent, organic products, and gifts and collectibles were another thing that we think could be bucketed up with a specialty item shopper. So the first example that I wanted to share with you is Beyond Meat. And Beyond Meat is doing something really great with their site which other CPG brands are starting to get into, which is they're using their website as a platform to test new products. So you know that if someone is coming to your website, that they're a customer that's really interested in what you have to offer. And Beyond Meat will sometimes offer items that not available yet in the store, new things that are in development, and they'll offer you a discount if you will give them some feedback on the product. And so using that as a way to develop that two-way engagement and really
solidify that customer relationship is an excellent strategy. They're not the only ones doing this, but I think they also have a really beautiful website, and in terms of telling the product story, knowing that consumers who are interested in plant-based protein, they really want to know about the impact. They want to know details. They really want to make sure that the brand really is truly sustainable and really practice what they preach, and they do a great job of that. There's not a ton of products for sale, but the products that are available are these discovery sample packs. So this is a really nice website with some beautiful content that is a great example. And for me, the highlight is testing new products and developing that two-way engagement with consumers through that product innovation is what makes this site so great.
Another great example, KitKat's doing a lot of great stuff in store and online. And this example is something that you can't buy at the store. It's giftable, and it's personal, and it's unique. And it's really not that expensive. It's going to be about $20 or so to get a KitKat with your friend's photo on it. So it's not necessarily is this going to be a huge money-making platform? I don't know, but it's definitely really engaging, and the site is also just gorgeous. That top right-hand image, that conveyor belt moves. The top left-hand image, it's like a pinwheel that spins with all these beautiful colors, and there's a lot of products that are available on the site that you can't get in the store. So giftable, personalized, and really beautiful design. That's what makes the KitKat site really exciting.
And the last opportunity that I wanted to talk about, again, we're talking about the specialty item shopper here Could you take a small section of your offering, maybe five to 10 SKUs that address a particular group? Could be bakers, could be meat lovers who are barbecuing over open flame, could be somebody who's really into the keto diet. Something that makes sense for your brand, a product offering you already have, and premiumize it, and then build the line extensions around it to speak to this core group, this niche audience. We think this is a great opportunity for brands. And so here on the left, I've got a baking site example, then we've got a spice brand site. And then on the right-hand side, really have to call out wellness as a huge opportunity that I know many of you are already thinking about as a way to build on some products you may already have and extend into products that maybe are too niche to be in every
grocery store across the country, but that could be great to sell on your own site. Okay, so that's it for the specialty item shopper. Now I want to talk about the event shopper. So this shopper, what is it? 13%, so slightly less, but when we're looking at this shopper, there's more in Canada than there are in the US, and they tend to skew female and a little bit older. So when we look at all these different potential events that someone is looking for, a really easy, all-in-one solution. Right now, there's really not a lot available in terms of what CPG brands are offering. There are restaurants that are offering some of this type of thing. So we think this is an opportunity here for CPG brands. And so I don't have an example to show you of a CPG brand that's doing this, but I'm going to show you what it could look like. And important to just note that you want to elevate the experience, but it's not going to be as expensive as if we
got it catered, and also to think about how to customize these experiences. So as inspiration, this is not what I'm suggesting that you do, but this is an inspirational slide here. These are party boxes, which really took off during the pandemic, and they were sometimes partnered with activities. So sometimes it would be like a painting kit, and you'd have a party with your friends, and you'd get some wine. Everybody gets delivered a little mini bottle of wine and a painting kit, or maybe it's a gift kit where you're selecting certain items that are just for your friends, and you're having a Zoom party with these bundled kits. So, I think it's really important to look at what's already out there and think about how could this work for a CPG brand. So I created my own barbecue. This is my picnic kit. So on the left-hand side, we're starting with a basic kit. So your condiments, your buns, and your
hot dogs. And then on the right-hand side, these are all the places where the consumer gets to select what they want. So you've got your plates and your napkins. You could have a range of different celebrations depending on the time of the year. Then you could select some salty snacks and some sweets, and here's where you can get into offering things that are not available in the store, some limited time offers that maybe were cult classics that doesn't make sense to have them in every store across the country, but that it could make sense at a small scale to produce some and have them available on your website. I do have Oreo here, and Oreo is a website that's doing a really great job if you want a good example of a brand that's got customization, they've got limited time offers. They've got some product innovation. They've got all kinds of gifts available. Really great site. And they're even starting to get into some content.
So I'd recommend looking at the Oreo site. And then looking in the top right-hand corner here, what if you partnered with an independent brand to offer some premium toppings for those hot dogs? You could make those products yourself, and this could be a line extension. But the nice thing about partnering with an indie brand is that it gives national brands that credibility that these indie brands have, and so that street cred. It's a win-win because then they get your reach. So there's an opportunity there. So you could have a nice bundle here where you've got drinks, you've got snacks. It's all in one. It's really easy. We think there's an opportunity around this bundled experience to address that event shopper who's looking for something and probably not finding what they're looking for right now.
So the last group that I wanted to talk about is Gen Z. And what was really interesting is that right now they are twice as likely to shop CPG branded sites. So that's exciting news. They're also the second most brand loyal demographic. We asked consumers, "If you can't find your preferred brand, what do you do? Do you substitute with an alternative, or do you go to another platform to find the one that you want?" And Gen Z, they're going to do everything to find their preferred brand first. The only more loyal brand demographic is the 54 plus. Probably not too surprising that Gen Z is shopping every e-commerce platform really comfortably. And they're also really interested in unique and hard-to-find products. So I want to show you a brand that's doing a great job with Gen Z. And this is Mountain Dew. So we know that Gen Z, they have these niche interests that they're really passionate about, and of course, gaming is one of the
biggest. So Mountain Dew, they've been doing this since 2017. They've been really embedded in the world of gaming. So they've got a lot of credibility with this audience. In the top left-hand corner, that's the Mountain Dew landing page. So you come, and it's green. It's that brand color that you recognize. But then if you click on Mountain Dew Game Fuel, it takes you to this Game Fuel branded section of the site. And then on the top right-hand corner, we've got Shop, we've got Partners, and we've got Rewards. And they're doing an amazing job of all three. So in the Shop category here, I've got the Courageous Sherbet flavors, this is a partnered flavor with one of their streamers, Courage. Obviously doing really well. They're selling out. Then at the bottom here, you see the streamers, but if you go to the Partners section of their site and scroll, there's 25 different streamers that they've got there.
And some of them are small, they're young, very relatable to the target audience. And then here in the corner, we've got the Rewards. The reward programs are-- They've got amazing rewards. These are things that gamers would be purchasing in-game and also gear. So doing a really, really good job, really understanding what is interesting to this demographic. I also had to call out their reviews because I think they're doing such an awesome job of how they've set up these reviews here. And what they have is they're not just asking consumers to tell them about what they like about the product. They are also asking consumers to give them some information about them. Tell us about how you play. Tell us what your favorite title is. And if you look at the responses here, they're really fun. "Buy it, son." "Yay." It's really vibrant and energetic, and they have a ton of reviews on their site. So really just demonstrating that Mountain Dew has really
captivated this audience and got their attention, and it's believable to them.
I couldn't talk about Gen Z without touching on content and customization. So content strategy, really, really important. Looking at Red Bull, they're an amazing example of how to do it right. And so what they're doing that is so great is there's not a lot of product in these videos on TikTok. If you look on TikTok and see their videos, you might see a Red Bull logo, but they're just these really fun images and videos of stunts, crazy stunts that they know their audience is going to be really interested in and that they're going to like sharing. I did mention the Oreo website. I do really recommend taking a look because Oreo kind of has everything covered. They've got the Customize Your Oreo. They've got some really fun gifts, including they've got this cookie jar that kind of looks like you're dunking the cookie into the milk. They have gluten-free cookies. They've got all kinds of fun flavors.
And then they have some content, videos and stuff like that. So they're doing a really great job on their website.
So just to reiterate the key opportunities around your own direct-to-consumer strategy that came through the research product innovation, thinking about Beyond Meat, premiumized online-only lines, gifts and collectibles. I didn't touch too much on that, but the Barbie website is a great example of how to leverage collectibles. Customization, subscriptions, there's lots of opportunities around subscriptions. Bundled experiences, something that's not currently available, but that we think the event shopper would be interested in. That two-way engagement through reviews, through community building, thinking about Mountain Dew, really great example. Content strategy and strategic partnerships. Okay, so I'm just going to summarize all of these opportunities, and then I'm going to give you a chance to ask me any questions. We can go back to anything. I am going to share this presentation with you after the
webinar's finished. We will also share the study, which has a lot more detail. And in this presentation, there are actually some further examples. I didn't think we would have time, and looking at the clock, I'm glad I didn't include those because we won't have time to get to them. But there are some other examples of CPG brands that are doing some great stuff. So take a look. So I've classified the opportunities into crawl, walk, and run stages. So the crawl being things that you can get to pretty easily. The walk being things that may take a bit more work, and the run, things that are going to require a lot more planning. So the crawl, these are the easy opportunities, optimizing visibility on all those partner platforms and optimizing information, filling in all those spaces, responding to consumer reviews and comments on social media. Maximizing formats across all these partner platforms, pretty
easy win. Finding ways to get samples to consumers, talking to your partners about that. And if you do already have an e-commerce website and you haven't enabled reviews, you should be able to do that relatively easily, and we highly recommend that you do that. In the walk phase, we've got subscriptions. Specialty product innovation strategy. Now, you probably wouldn't be able to get this up and running in the walk timeframe, but you could definitely get a strategy going. You could develop an e-commerce site with your current offering, including reviews, storytelling, and product information. And if you don't have one, please get one as soon as possible. Content strategy development for two-way engagement. You could plan and you could start it. It does take some time to get those things going. And if you do already have an e-commerce website, here's where you could add personalization. Then in the run phase, here's where you could develop an e-commerce
site based on an innovation model. So whether that is your premium SKUs and the line extensions, or if it's that bundled experience. You could have your content strategy fully implemented, and you could have those strategic partnerships with local indie brands secured. So SLD can help you with a lot of these things. We do package design, and we're always thinking about the online experience and the in-store experience. We design websites and can help you with business model innovation. Strategic foresight is one of the things that we do. And we can help you with content strategy development, planning, and content creation. So if you have any interest, get in touch with us after the webinar. Thank you for your time. So now I'd like to open it up to you and see if anyone has any questions.
If you want to ask a question, you can go to the Q&A box that's at the bottom, and type it in there.
So we've got a question here. "Do you have a sense of how things would change in an urban versus rural setting?" Yes. So obviously a lot of consumers are indicating that when free same-day delivery is not available, this is a big problem for them, and especially in Canada. Geographically, we can see that this is definitely driving consumers more to the store. So if you're able to resolve this, and this is a challenge, if you're sending a package a really long distance, can you offer free delivery? That's a question that should be one that's on the top of your list for your own direct-to-consumer site. If you can, it might inspire people to shop for your products on your site if you're offering that and Amazon or the grocery site isn't. But definitely rural consumers are, parents in rural communities are also shopping more online because they're struggling to find those organic, maybe organic baby food
or diapers that are better compostable or better for the environment. They maybe can't find them in their store. So there definitely is a split there. And consumers in rural communities are struggling with the online experience compared to in store. We have another question here. "How important do consumers find A+ mobile content on product detail pages?" So how important-- Well, consumers told us that product information is highly important to them. So it's very important to think about that mobile experience, whether it is with those partner sites or on your own direct-to-consumer site, making sure that it's visible. And if you're noticing that on one of your partner sites, if you go and you're on your mobile device and it doesn't look right, talk to your partners because like I said, we're not finished with this conversation about it. It's something that they're still figuring out as well.
And having a dialogue with your partners and saying, "Hey, look, people are telling me they want this information, but when they're looking at this on their website, it doesn't look right. How can we fix this?" Partners want to do it well as well. They want to get it right. So having those conversations is an opportunity. See if I've got any other... Oh, we've got changes in shopping behavior post-COVID versus pre-COVID. So we asked consumers about this, and so 48% of consumers said that they shopped more online during the pandemic, and they plan to continue. So we know that there can be a gap when we ask consumers about what they intend to do. They may believe they intend to do something, but then when life starts happening, there's a gap. We call this the intention-action gap. And so 48% of consumers are saying they do plan to shop more online. 20% of consumers are saying, "Once the pandemic recedes, I've been shopping online, but I'm going to go back to the
store." Again, are they going to go back? It's going to be interesting to see. That's what they say they intend to do, but over the coming months, we're going to find out if that's really what happens. I've got another question here. "Starting to see some retailers globally and in a buggy, thinking of St. Lawrence Market, offering 3D content." That's interesting. We did ask about 3D content. It did not seem to resonate with consumers. Gen Z was more interested than others, but when we asked people about 3D content, it was really, really low on the list of priorities. So if I was thinking about my marketing spend, I wouldn't be focused on that right now. Maybe in the future, I might consider putting that into research thinking about Gen Z, but it really didn't seem to resonate with consumers in our study. And I did touch on that in the actual report. There's more information about that.
Any other questions?
We will also share in this email our Deep Real study. I think there's a lot of really interesting information about brand trust for CPG brands, so we will share that with you as well.
If we don't have any other questions, I will say thank you for attending and let you all go and enjoy a beautiful Thursday afternoon.
