POPAI announced last month that in their latest survey 76% of purchase decisions are made in-store.  This has caused some heated debate in the last few weeks.
Some commentators  quoted much lower figures ranging from 15% to 50% from other surveys as evidence that the number was not that high. This caused me to do a bit of research. It seems the other surveys that I saw quoted were online surveys where shoppers responded with their impression of how they reacted in-store. The results were therefore somewhat questionable.
By comparison the POPAI survey was carried out by asking each shopper individually as they went into the store what they were going to buy. POPAI then checked what they actually bought when shoppers came out of the store. Checks on stock availability and eye tracking was used to ensure that the results were as consistent as possible. They seemed to do as much as they could to get it right.
There are obviously a range of different results possible from different categories of store, geographies and basket types etc. so retailers must do their own research to get an accurate figure for themselves. However, what the POPAI research does prove is that a very high percentage of decisions are made in-store.  It’s up to us to capitalize on that knowledge rather than spending time debating exact percentages.