Consumer Experience (CX)

When we talk about designing and planning a retail brand, we always start with user experience, or CX as it is often called. The audience of any brand is not homogeneous, it represents certain segments, which are usually distinguished on the basis of demographic and psychographic characteristics, as well as more complex elements of consumer behavior, patterns.

We use different tools to study user experience. As a rule, this is a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. This can be desk research, where we study the profiles of these people, their key needs and possible drivers and barriers to making a decision in choosing a particular product or service. And there may be field studies when we combine the in-depth interview method, in which we discuss in detail with the consumer how he makes a decision to buy a hot dog at a gas station, which is important to him.

It can also be a method that we love very much — the participant observation method. It consists in the fact that we take part in the actual process of using a service or buying a product. We literally go to a retail outlet and ask a person to behave in an absolutely natural way, as he would behave in normal conditions when there are no observers. We note everything: how he walks in the space of the store, what he looks at, what he pays attention to, how he chooses a product, how he pays for it, packs it, how he carries it. We further discuss all these points with the respondents in order to understand the significance of certain things.

The combination of these methods, mostly qualitative, makes it possible to understand what is important for consumers from different segments, and to compose all the inputs for the formation of a creative brief. Based on these inputs, the creative team then develops a retail concept that takes into account the interests, needs and characteristics of the purchasing behavior of a variety of people.