寻找真正的增长杠杆：购物者转化泄漏

Finding the real growth lever:the shopper conversion leakage case Contents Introduction 2From symptoms to drivers: a shopper-based diagnostic model Case study: Personal Wash category at Retailer A 4Turning insight into a category plan (without guessing) 5Conclusion Introduction In one year,255,000 shoppers stopped buyingshower gel from one grocery retailer.Notbecause they left the category, but because theybought it elsewhere. We set out a shopper behavior diagnosticfocused onconversion(buyer closure rate),showing how to: •Separate real demand from price effects•Pinpoint the behavioral drivers behind thetopline•Size the opportunity using crediblebenchmarks This report showswho is leaving, where they go,and what drives the switch - including why“more promotions”, won’t win them backin thiscase. Too many category plans start with sales resultsand work backward. But sales data tells you whathappened, not why. When the “why” is missing,teams fall back on familiar levers - promotions,price moves, traffic tactics - and treat symptomsinstead of the underlying issue. A real, anonymized case study inPersonal Wash(bath and shower gel)brings the method to life. Retailer A saw category value decline eventhough demand and store traffic were stable. Theloss came from conversion - fewer potentialcategory buyers bought the category in-store.Promotions weren’t the root cause. Leakageconcentrated to a small set of competitors,clustered around specific brands and price tiers. Across Western Europe,the value line is rising,but it is being lifted by price - not demand.Inflation has pushed up what shoppers pay at thetill, while volumes have remained broadly flat -euros are up, baskets aren’t. When volume is flat, brands don’t grow bycreating more consumption. They grow bywinning switching, trading down, smallerbaskets, fewer trips, or a shift to private label. In that kind of market, thefirst instinct is often toturn up promotions. But more activity can addcost and volatility without moving the categoryforward. So, what happens when brands respond byturning up promotions? Here’s what the data shows - promotions increased, butcategory volume didn’t. Across multiple fast-moving consumergoods (FMCG) sectors, promotion pressure has risen, yetvolumes have stayed flat. You can be busy - and still loseground. The value line can still rise, but the foundations get weaker.That’s the illusion of growth - a category that looks healthy invalue terms but isn’t creating more demand. This is where decisions often slip. If you only watch toplinevalue, you can miss what’s happening at the shelf: shoppers stillshow up, but they complete the purchase elsewhere. Beforechanging price or turning the promo dial up again, test onequestion - do you have a demand problem, or a conversionproblem? Why?Deals often pull purchases forward or shift share betweenbrands, rather than building real demand. The result is morevalue given away without strengthening the base of thecategory. a shopper-baseddiagnostic model For conversion, the core metric isbuyer closure rate: Buyer closure rate = buyers who purchase the category in your store÷category buyers who shop your store(your “buyer potential”) That definition matters because it separates two different problems: 1.Traffic problem: fewer shoppers visit the store. A shopper diagnostic starts with decomposition.Instead of treating “category value” as a singlenumber, you break it into the behaviors that create it: 2.Category conversion problem:shoppers still visit, category demandexists, but the store fails to convertcategory buyers into in-storecategory buyers. •How many category shoppers who visit theretailer actually buy the category?•How often they buy(frequency: trips per buyer)•How much they spend when they buy(spend pertrip; spend per buyer) Once you isolate conversion, youcan prioritize based on evidence,not assumptions. Quantificationranks the levers, sizes the value,and sets a clear sequence ofactions. This structure makes the story visible quickly:Value can fall because you lost buyers, even if theremaining buyers spend more per trip. Case Study:Personal Washcategory atRetailer A of shopper behavior The biggest driver is buyer loss. Thenumber of Personal Wash buyers atRetailer A is down12.8%- a decline of255,000 buyers. In other words, fewershoppers are choosing this retailer forthe category. Spend per buyer and spend per tripboth edge up, largely due to price,which softens the decline but doesnot offset the loss of buyers.Frequency is flat, suggestingremaining buyers have not reducedhow often they purchase - the issue isconversion, not weaker buying habits. Even in this simplified view, the storyis clear:Retailer A is losing categorybuyers, and higher spend per tripcannot compensate.That is the valueof the approach - one structured viewexplains most of the decline andisolates the primary driver. This figure shows the simplified diagnosticfor Personal Wash at Retailer