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Blimey, in-store sampling showed no real positive return on investment, with high costs for a relatively low-reach”, surely not [sic]

At last some major research which really proves what most of us in the industry have known for a long, long time anyway, which is that in-store sampling is not only very expensive, delivering no real RoI or cut-through, but it is also a complete waste-of-time and arguably actually probably counter-effective.

In fact pretty much all in-store grocery sampling, mainly controlled by the mults own sampling agencies, who naturally have a vested interest in maintaining the status-quo, is undertaken by ‘Doris from the checkout’, probably very nice, but a completely non brand trained store staff member who lacks passion, enthusiasm and most importantly any product knowledge, following the mantra “try this” to which the response if any, is probably “what is it” and the reply “don’t know but try it anyway”.

As the nucleus of these samplers, I wouldn’t call them brand ambassadors, is drawn from store or itinerate, part-time staff, who will be sampling yoghurt, one day, mobile phones the next and wine the following day, all without a clue of what they’re doing, and don’t be fooled by the ‘well they been sent the brand briefing document’ argument, which they probably haven’t bothered to read, that’s if they got it in the first place, it’s hardly surprising that in-store is so grossly ineffective!

So why do brands do it? Well one of the key reasons is buyer pressure, not that the buyers think it’ll do much good anyway, it’s just another ‘bottom-line’ contributor, secondly the mults sampling agencies have tried to stitch, sorry I meant sew-up the available options so that it becomes almost impossible to use properly brand trained, because, yes you’ve guessed, it reduces their profitability and finally many brand managers simply don’t know any better!

So well done IRI for finally highlighting one of the biggest farces in grocery marketing. It’ll certainly be interesting to see the response across the industry!