Shopper Marketing Is About Changing Behaviour, Not Just Filling Baskets
Shopper marketing is often reduced to one simple objective: get the product into the basket. But the basket is only one part of the story.
At Hyphen Creatives, we believe shopper marketing is about something bigger: changing the habits and behaviours of shoppers to create more meaningful connections between brands, retailers, shoppers and consumers. That might mean getting a brand into more households. It might mean encouraging shoppers to buy more at a time, buy more often, or explore more of a brand’s portfolio.
The important question isn’t simply “How do we get this product into the basket?”
It’s:
“What behaviour are we trying to change?”
Once that question is answered, the role of shopper marketing becomes much clearer.
First, know who you’re talking to and when to talk to them[JB1]
One of the most important principles in shopper marketing is understanding who you’re trying to influence, what they need, and when they are most receptive to your brand.
The shopper and the consumer aren’t always the same person, and both have different needs and motivations. Think about a parent buying breakfast cereal for their children. The parent is the shopper, but the child is the consumer. While their needs may differ, understanding both helps brands create more relevant communication and experiences.
It also means being intentional about where you show up.
A brand can have a presence across some of the biggest media touchpoints, but if those touchpoints don’t reach the right shopper at the right moment, their size doesn’t necessarily translate into impact. The biggest touchpoint isn’t always the right touchpoint.
Effective shopper marketing connects brands with people where they are, when they are making decisions, and in ways that are relevant to the behaviour the brand wants to influence. And while communication still plays an important role in moving shoppers through awareness, consideration and conversion, the opportunity goes beyond communication alone. Shopper marketing gives brands’ the opportunity to create experiences, incentives and solutions that actively change what people do.
So, what behaviours can brands influence?
- Driving penetration: Get into more baskets and households
At its simplest, this means building awareness and presence among people who aren’t currently buying you.
But driving penetration isn’t always about putting your product in more places. Sometimes it’s about showing up in places where shoppers are already looking for a solution.
Take Pieman’s, for example. The brand faced a key visibility challenge in-store, with no available media options in the bakery category, where freshly baked retailer goods dominated. As a result, customers had no way of knowing they were purchasing Pieman’s pies.
To drive the penetration they were after, we developed a unique in-store media solution that could be installed at bakery warmers, allowing Pieman’s to communicate with shoppers right where they were making their next meal or snack decision.
The opportunity was to turn every warmer into a clear, standout touchpoint, so customers could instantly recognise those delicious, freshly baked pies as proudly Pieman’s.
This is where shopper marketing moves beyond visibility. It’s not simply about asking, “Where can we put the brand?” It’s about asking: “Where are shoppers already behaving in a way that makes our brand relevant?”
Finding those moments can help brands reach new shoppers and ultimately build penetration.
- Driving weight of purchase: Get shoppers to buy more
Driving weight of purchase is about increasing the volume purchased per shopping trip or consumption occasion.
To do this, you need to give shoppers a reason to add more to their basket.
For Douwe Egberts ready-to-drink iced coffee launch campaign, the brand didn’t simply want to drive trial of its new product, it wanted to drive immediate volume. So twe activated a buy-and-stand to win reward that required the purchase of two products, rather than just one.
This mechanic created a simple behavioural shift: the shopper who might otherwise have purchased a single product now had a reason to purchase an additional one.
The principle can be applied in many ways, from multi-purchase promotions to meal solutions and consumption-led incentives. The important thing is that the brand isn’t simply communicating “buy more.” It’s also giving shoppers a reason to do so.
Whether the reason’s: value, convenience, an occasion, a reward or simply a better solution to a shopper’s needs, the end goal is to turn one purchase into something bigger.
- Driving purchase frequency: Give shoppers reasons to come back
Driving purchase frequency is about creating more opportunities for the brand to enter shopping trips or consumption occasions.
After McCain Fries’ stock challenges in 2025, the brand needed a strategy that would not only return lapsed shoppers, but also give shoppers a reason to purchase the brand repeatedly.
We helped develop a multi-placement cross-over strategy, placing McCain media in categories that pair perfectly with McCain Fries including, condiments, frozen chicken nuggets and frozen fish.
Instead of treating McCain Fries as an isolated purchase, the campaign connected it to different meal occasions throughout the shopper journey. This created a different kind of purchase trigger, one based on purpose and inspiration.
Driving purchase frequency relies on building more occasions that showcase how your brand fits into a shopper’s life and, as a result, creating more opportunities for shoppers to choose you.
- Driving mix of purchase: Get shoppers to explore more of your portfolio
If driving penetration considers: Are shoppers buying us?
Driving weight considers: How much are shoppers buying?
And driving frequency considers: How often are they buying?
Driving mix of purchase considers:
What else could shoppers be buying from us?
This is particularly relevant for brands with multiple products or portfolios that work together to solve a broader consumer need.
A prime example is Unilever’s ‘Perfect Sishebo’ campaign. The strategy was straightforward, shoppers stood to win when they purchased three complementary products from respective spice, seasoning and packet soup brands within the house of brands.
Rather than having the brands compete for a single space in the basket, Unilever created an approach that allowed the three brands to achieve synergy around a single purchase occasion, making the Perfect Sishebo and leveraging their brand architecture as a shopper marketing opportunity.
When a brand house has complementary products it creates the opportunity to drive mix of purchase by shifting the focus from selling individual SKUs to building solutions, occasions and baskets that feature brands collectively. The result is not simply another product purchase. It’s an opportunity to introduce shoppers to more of the portfolio and expand their brand repertoire.
Driving mix is about making the basket work harder for the brand.
Before selecting channels
The four behaviours aren’t mutually exclusive and a single campaign can drive more than one behaviour. They provide a useful way of thinking about shopper marketing because they force us to start with the behaviour, rather than the media channel, a process that too often happens in reverse – with brands choosing touchpoints and then considering their shopper marketing objectives.
Before selecting your campaign touchpoints consider the below to identify which behaviour you’re trying to influence:
What do we need the shopper to do differently:
- Do we need more people to try the brand?
- Do we need existing shoppers to buy more?
- Do we need them to return more often?
- Do we need them to buy across more of our portfolio?
Once that is clear, the role of the channel becomes much more strategic. Decisions can be made with the understanding that the shopper journey isn’t linear, and one touchpoint doesn’t need to do all the work.
That’s why effective shopper marketing isn’t just about trying to fill baskets it’s about understanding how you want shoppers to behave and where that behaviour is most likely to occur, not simply where media is available.
At Hyphen Creatives, this is at the heart of how we think about shopper marketing: connecting brands to their consumers by understanding the behaviours that sit between the brand and the basket.
[JB1]I don’t know if this section is necessary considering after this we never speak to the buyer vs consumer relationship