Share of Mind Studies

Are Store Associates Selling Your Products, or The Competitions?

You’ve worked hard to differentiate your products from the competition, invested a lot in advertising and marketing materials, training of sales associates, and sometimes, slotting fees. Yet a big challenge remains to assure your product’s success: you don’t own or operate your own stores, and so you must rely on someone else’s associates to make your products successful.

At the moment of truth, when a customer asks them about your products, and maybe the competition’s, what do they say? Who do they recommend, and why? Do they recall the training you’ve provided, the bullet-points from the materials you sent them, etc.? Worst-case scenario: they recommend your competition, for reasons that aren’t accurate, or that your product covers. Share of Mind studies can help you discover what associates really know and say about your (and your competition’s) products to customers; what brands/products they recommend and why.

Let’s put this into perspective. Say you are the manufacturer of a top-of-the-line makeup brand. Your products are being sold in stores like Sephora, Ulta etc. all around the United States. It would be nearly impossible for you to know how your product is being sold in every store, at every location. Share of Mind studies are essential for manufacturers who sell through non-owned/controlled channels.

On top of finding out what has been said about your brand, you can even see exactly how your products appear in any given environment. With high-resolution photography, you can see if the presentation is on-brand, displayed correctly, stocked fully, and how it compares to the competition.

Sales associates can be the single biggest influencer of brand choice. Share of Mind studies can show you how subtle shifts in salesperson recommendation rates can not only predict changes in market share, they can even impact overall brand image. Now as a makeup manufacturer, you need to know the right things to do, right now, to make your business better. Start with contacting the Experts in Customer Experience today and get more of your products on the faces of more consumers, more often.