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Modern Trade, Modern Mindsets: Cracking In-Store & Cross-Format Shopper Behaviour

A leading FMCG brand wanted to decode why Modern Trade spends stayed low despite strong footfall. We combined shop-alongs, in-store heatmaps, and a 720-user survey to trace how baskets form, shift, and stall across store types. The insight: it’s not just about discounts—it’s about mission fit, format roles, and trust gaps. The work is now reshaping MT strategy across frequency, value, and visibility.

The Challenge

In a rapidly evolving retail landscape where traditional and modern trade formats coexist with e-commerce and Q-commerce, a leading FMCG major needed to understand why average monthly spends in Modern Trade (MT) accounts remained low—despite high shopper footfall. Was it a frequency issue? A basket size issue? Or rooted in platform perceptions? The business needed sharper insight into shopper journeys, decision-making, and account-switching behaviours to recalibrate its MT strategy.


Our Approach

We adopted a dual-track insight engine, blending cognitive walkthroughs with scaled quant intercepts:

  • Cognitive Shop-Alongs: Accompanied shopping journeys and in-store heatmaps, followed by decision-making depth interviews—designed to trace shopper planning, deviation, category flow, and interaction with visibility elements.

  • Shopper Survey (n=720): Captured behavioural patterns across cities and store formats (national, regional, local) to size motivations, preference hierarchies, and account role differentiation.

  • Triangulation across Missions, Formats, and Life-Stages: Allowed decoding of account loyalties, category elasticity, and role of discounting vs. assortment in shaping brand and basket behaviour.

The Impact

  • The integrated output reframed the MT playbook around three unlocks: frequency, value, and basket expansion. The study identified mission-specific behaviours (monthly stock-up vs. tactical top-ups), highlighted trust barriers in fresh/staple categories, and spotlighted gaps in omnichannel transitions. 

  • It is now guiding a phased MT re-architecture across retail formats, with sharper role definitions for each store type, optimised visibility interventions, and tailored promotions that fit the shopper’s real, lived rhythm.

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