Brand engagement study - investigating female shoppers’ engagement with major high street/ department stores

The last of the four studies was carried out in the retail sector. We tested five major high street/department stores - Debenhams, Next, John Lewis, Marks and Spencer and Woolworths, targeting women aged 30-50 who had shopped in at least three of the stores in the last six months who agreed that they ‘enjoy shopping in major stores on the high street’.

Based on the above criteria, it is fair to say that these women were very much engaged with this sector - and in a very positive way. Therefore, for this audience, brand engagement with the stores wasn’t just about the brand personality but also very much about what those brands could deliver to them personally.

On average, across all five brands, online display advertising contributed to 40% of the gross communications effect. This compares to 31% for press, 19% for TV, 8% for radio and 3% for outdoor. Further to this we were able to work out that online advertising for department stores was 16 times as effective per £1 spent as the all media average. Online proved to be a very effective platform to achieve brand engagement in the retail sector – more so than any other medium.

Online advertising works hard for its money

We found that messaging and how this was delivered was key. These women needed to be engaged with clear messages that were literal and not abstract. They were engaging with content that told them what they wanted to know in a simple, straight forward and creative way. The message was clear to see from the creative. For example, campaigns talked about a ‘new collection’ or something ‘exclusive’. In contrast to this, we found that where the creative in other media was more abstract (and it wasn’t clear what was being advertised), brand engagement appeared to be lessened.

It also became apparent how important it is to ensure that the website experience is a positive one for these women. Website experiences had over twice the impact than the brand’s own communications on brand engagement. Overall ease of use of the sites accounted for half of this.

Brand engagement of the gross communications effect across all four studies

Access the full results of all four brand engagement studies.

Having looked in detail at how online can successfully drive brand engagement alongside other media, let us now look at how effective online is (both as a platform and also from an advertising perspective) in combination with other media - specifically TV.

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