"The results are very encouraging for local print," says Gill Randall, Joint MD of NAB. "We conducted 10, two-hour home immersions with readers in the greater Johannesburg area and certain insights came out in the findings.
"One is that in our current retail environment, bricks have not yet been replaced by clicks - Secondly, purchase decisions are still strongly influenced before a consumer even sets foot into a shop as indicated by the 70% of readers that refer to their local newspaper for shopping information. Thirdly, online shopping is frequently used as window-shopping and is done in parallel with browsing for inserts in local media.
"Through these sessions we also established that where advertising information is easily available, a simpler path to purchase leads to a quicker decision by the consumer. Conversely, where there is no easy reference point for comparative information, the path to purchase becomes complicated and more time consuming. So, brands need to be presented in a space that consumers use as a regular point of reference for any specific category."
"That space has been proven repeatedly to be inserts in local newspapers. Based on ROOTS research over the years, planning for a shopping trip among consumers has increased by 20% since 2004. The News Association of America (NAA) backs these figures by showing that its own consumers follow the same trends in a growing digital economy.
"The reality is that consumers are both money and time scarce. Brands that can make their lives easier by having all the required information available in an easy to access space will win at the end of the day.
"No two consumer's path to purchase is the same, but inevitably they will default to their chosen reference points which remains retail inserts in the local newspaper. Advertisers don't need to predict consumer behaviour but rather they need to understand it."
"One of the fundamentals of NAB is to bring proven and workable marketing insights to the industry, and 'Random Reality' is a further asset in our array of offerings," concludes Randall.
