Understanding consumer purchasing behaviour

What criteria drive consumers to make purchase decisions and how important are these criteria?

Market Structure analysis unravels the competitive dynamics of a category by identifying the product attributes that drive consumer purchases. ACNielsen Analytic Consulting can enhance your understanding of the product attributes consumers value most and the competitive products in their shopping baskets.

Key questions addressed

Market Structure analysis can be used to address the following questions:

• Which product attributes do consumers value most and how important is one attribute relative to another?
• With which brands do I most closely compete?
• Are there new product or line extension opportunities in the category?
• What is an appropriate shelf alignment for this category given consumer preferences?
  

Market Structure applications

• Brand management - understand the competitive landscape and identify new product opportunities.
• Category management, sales and retail management - understand the hierarchy of product attribute importance for use in developing shelf sets and key determinants of product assortment which appeal to consumers based on their shopping behaviour.
• Research - understand how consumers perceive brands and make product choices and how purchase behaviors align with attitudinal research.

Key benefits

• Understand how consumers define categories
• Pinpoint the product attributes consumers value most
• Determine which competitive products consumers buy
• Identify sub-categories within the category
• Locate gaps in product offerings

Project content

Data from the ACNielsen’s consumer panels is used to analyse the relative importance of products from a consumer perspective. ACNielsen | Homescan is the world’s most advanced consumer panel designed to monitor the purchasing habits of Australian consumers. Using this technique, ACNielsen collects information on over 900,000 shopping trips annually.

Market Structure is frequently accompanied by Preference Segmentation analysis in order to better understand the actual consumers and households that share similar purchase patterns.

Project output
Market Structure delivers an asymmetrical structural tree of the category including importance measures of all significant product attributes. Analyses are accompanied by professional consultation and recommendations.

Market Structure will:

• Identify and quantify the importance of product attributes to the category.
• Evaluate consumers' entire purchase portfolio, not just transaction-to-transaction switching patterns.
• Define the attribute hierarchy that drives household purchases.
• Pinpoint potential duplication and product gap issues by examining consumer purchasing and competitive offerings.
  

Market Structure analysis provides an appropriate frame of reference for evaluating the competitive marketplace, and can be integrated with various other modelling capabilities.

For more information on Market Structure please contact your ACNielsen Account Manager or click here to download the product information flyer.