Shopper Insight -- Cross Marketing Inc.

The Japan market is reaching its maturity. In such a highly competitive environment, it is any marketer's challenge to build positive Brand linkage with consumers and differentiation versus competitive brands by marketing activities using large scale mass media alone. It is important, in building specific Brand linkage and ultimately, purchase intention, to navigate consumers' relationship with individual Brands effectively.

Cross Marketing offers its Consumer View Tracker (CVT) and accumulated analysis expertise - to evaluate and optimize the effectiveness of in-store marketing materials as well as the layout of retail outlets.

CVT is a methodology which records consumers' in-store behavior in real-time along with their visual fixation movement. This methodology allows for collecting and data analysis from actual consumers' behavior during their shopping experience. It leads to an analysis of consumers' behavioral process and corresponding reasons, within the principle of real consumers' shopping behavior. Further, it is possible to understand the evaluation of the entire retail outlet layout, as well as any potential areas of improvement from the consumers' viewpoint.

During the CVT study, while wearing goggle-type equipment which is equipped with infra-red technology which records what elements the respondent is viewing (fixation), respondents complete a mock shopping task referred to as a shopping exercise. Once the shopping exercise is completed, respondents have an post interview in a separate area/ room, which normally lasts approximately 15 minutes. The post interview is conducted based on a pre-developed questionnaire, and includes any elements they remember and their attitudes after the shopping exercise.

Analysis linking in-store physical behavior with attitudinal behavior consolidated through the physical behavior, reveals the psychological mechanisms behind consumers' purchase behavior.