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Seeing the bigger opportunity for eye tracking

Understanding why people react and behave the way they do is fundamental to consumer research. However, the complexity of human behaviour and the fact that much of what we do is subconscious makes this a difficult task. Shopper research is a particularly pertinent example, as shoppers are influenced by a wide range of visual cues that they may not be consciously aware of. This means that research approaches that solely rely on speaking to shoppers post-purchase fail to understand the whole picture.

One tool that helps to build a more holistic understanding of shopper behaviour is eye tracking. Eye tracking is a behavioural research tool that, as its name suggests, is a technology that is able to track exactly where the human eye is looking. It was developed originally for military and medical applications, but in recent years has been applied as a research tool to help understand consumer and shopper behaviour.

Eye tracking is widely used in the FMCG sector to help guide and evaluate packaging design, often forming part of a larger set of pre-test measures prior to launch. It allows brands to evaluate the stand-out of specific products within the category, as well as understand in detail which elements of the packaging and PoS shoppers’ eyes are drawn to. It essentially helps to bridge the gap between what shoppers actually see/do at the point of purchase and what they recall seeing and doing, which is often quite different due to the brain’s filtering mechanisms.  

When combined with more traditional qualitative research techniques, eye tracking is also immensely useful in understanding in depth how people shop categories, and how they make product choices. The purchase process is often a complex mix of rational and emotional factors, and this mixed methodology approach helps to uncover the whole picture, compared to traditional research techniques which have a tendency to rationalise the purchase process.

At KD we recently used a mix of eye-tracking and in-depth interviewing to explore the role of packaging design in influencing how shoppers make their choices in the household and personal care categories. Whilst shoppers told us post-purchase that they made their choices using a fairly “rational” process of comparing prices and product claims, it was clear when reviewing the actual eye-tracking data together with respondents that the actual process of choosing was more complex.  

Product choice was influenced heavily by a range of visual cues such as colour, packaging structure / shape and materials, and our research helped to uncover which cues were being used and how they were being interpreted by the shopper. Indeed, in many cases, the role of on-product claims was minimal compared to these visual cues – this was particularly true in “me-too” categories, where packaging design plays a critical role in product differentiation. The project allowed us to identify a number of opportunities for brands to improve the way they communicate with shoppers through developing their packaging design (both graphic and structural), and in some cases repositioning their offer altogether.

At KD, research forms an integral part of the innovation and design process, and as such we see a much wider opportunity for eye tracking beyond packaging design.  As a tool it can potentially be applied at a number of different key stages of the process, such as generating key insights to fuel the innovation process, mapping the customer experience or testing product prototypes with complex operating instructions or user interfaces. Using eye tracking in this broader sense will help us to understand the subtleties of user behaviour and design products and services that meet their needs – both articulated and unarticulated.

For more information about eye-tracking and other research techniques at KD please contact Kate Leckie