How accompanied shops and in-store research have helped Dunelm and their suppliers connect products, values and customers.
There’s no better way of understanding your customers than with market research – but it has to be the right market research. Happy has been joining customers on shopping trips to the UK’s no. 1 soft furnishings specialist, Dunelm, to find out more about their experiences.
The new sales journey
It’s easy to think of a sales journey as beginning at the point at which a customer walks through your door. In Dunelm’s case it starts much earlier than that. It begins in the home, with a decision to replace, renovate or completely reimagine a living space. Then there’s the research, because big decisions require visits to numerous competing stores, with tape measures, smartphones and scribbled notes in hand.
How do we know this? Through our accompanied shops, where we join shoppers for a stroll through the store – and the entire decision-making process –to find the key points that influence them. What turns a browse into a buy? And what makes that decision take place in Dunelm?
Joining up the values of suppliers and customers
Dunelm’s core values are to place the customer at the heart of every process, so its suppliers are doing likewise. That’s why several suppliers asked Happy to get involved, and our work – in accompanying shoppers and through in-store, on-department research – has given them and Dunelm fresh, qualitative insights into the shopping experience, and how to develop it further.
Our analysis and recommendations are already influencing stores nationwide.
