Open for business: Connecting with today's shoppers

Whether you are a hunter, planner, brand-lover or a price-conscious consumer, the way you shop today is changing. You expect more from products and the companies that make and sell them. You are less inclined to be influenced by the "push" of traditional radio and print advertising. Instead, you want companies to cater to your specific and fast-changing tastes and needs.

Research shows that, in most instances, shoppers make up their minds about what they are going to buy within a few seconds of entering a store. "When a customer enters a shop, 70% of the time they make their buying decision in the first few seconds," says Monica Menghini, Global VP Industry CG, CPG and Retail for Dassault Systèmes.

But that does not mean shoppers are impulsive. In fact, today's shoppers are more informed and empowered about their purchasing options than ever before, actually making them less prone to impulse buying. They know what they want, and they expect companies to innovate and bring products to market faster than ever before.

“Companies share four common challenges: innovation, sustainability, governance and IT system fragmentation. Their product lifecycle management solutions must be focused on helping them address these challenges. ”

Monica Menghini,
Global VP Industry CG, CPG and Retail, Dassault Systèmes

"Shoppers are consumers with an active reason to buy," Menghini says. "They experience shopping as a holistic set of choices. Each brand must overcome barriers at each decision point encountered by the shopper and must deliver the right message when and where the shopper is the most receptive. Otherwise, even the best brands simply become clutter."

Increasingly, shopping is a multi-sensory experience that must appeal to consumers through sight, touch, sound, smell and taste. "Seeing through the eyes of the shopper is a way to create mystery, intimacy and sensuality with the consumers of this century, because shoppers are first moved by emotion," Menghini explains. "Nothing is more sensorial than a shopping experience, but only 7% of shoppers rate shopping as an 'exciting' experience."

When a customer enters a shop, 70% of the time they make their buying decision in the first few seconds.

Menghini says the first "moment of truth" has become the store. "The next creative revolution for the fastmoving consumer industries is going to happen in the store, and this is where Dassault Systèmes is going," she says. "With solutions like 3DVIA Shopper, our mission is to prescribe the right solution to win in stores. From store, space and shelf configurators to design and lifelike experience solutions, Dassault Systèmes is working to offer the consumer industries an endto- end solution with the same shopper-centric vision that our clients have today."

Companies in this space, Menghini says, share four common challenges: innovation, sustainability, governance and IT system fragmentation. Their product lifecycle management solutions must be focused on helping them address these challenges.

"Innovation in these industries is not the same as in automotive or aerospace, for example," Menghini says. "It's not the usual correlation between innovation rate and sustainable growth. The challenge is rather one of open innovation. The fast-moving consumer industries need a social innovation platform that facilitates an entirely new way of doing business that's driven by concepts like crowd sourcing and collective intelligence." To help drive this social evolution of innovation, she adds, Dassault Systèmes has just launched 3DSwYm, which is designed to help companies build relationships with their customers and leverage customer insight to work, analyze and innovate with them to deliver the products and services they truly want and need.

"Innovation in these industries is not the same as in automotive or aerospace, for example," Menghini says. "It's not the usual correlation between innovation rate and sustainable growth. The challenge is rather one of open innovation. The fast-moving consumer industries need a social innovation platform that facilitates an entirely new way of doing business that's driven by concepts like crowd sourcing and collective intelligence." To help drive this social evolution of innovation, she adds, Dassault Systèmes has just launched 3DSwYm, which is designed to help companies build relationships with their customers and leverage customer insight to work, analyze and innovate with them to deliver the products and services they truly want and need.

Although the sustainability challenge is not a new one for most companies, the nature of the challenge is changing, Menghini explains, to one focused more on the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. "Companies are focusing on eco-product development," she notes. "And this is a particularly interesting challenge for Dassault Systèmes to assist its clients with, because here design takes center stage. And, with products like CATIA and DELMIA, meeting this challenge is facilitated on many fronts, from optimized worker activity and ergonomics to greener products and production processes."

When it comes to governance, Menghini says, companies must select and adopt standards for process and profitability such as sizing, strategic planning, technology and ROI optimization. Doing so, however, is often hampered – particularly in the fastmoving consumer industries – by a mass of different, disconnected IT systems.

"Some of our clients have more than 750 different systems – and many, particularly in fashion, still rely just on spreadsheets to handle their most important information and processes," Menghini comments. "All of these industries need to shift from a system that is done by micro-process to a single, centralized process that actually creates a flow that is without roadblocks or silos. Innovative tools like the 3DS Fashion Lab and a variety of accelerators for fashion, consumer goods and consumer packaged goods from Dassault Systèmes, will help drive the creative revolution happening across these industries."