The 70 Percent Rule Revisited: Consumer In-Store Decision-Making and the Transformational Impact of Digital Signage

Steven Keith Platt, Director and Research Fellow, Platt Retail Institute
March 2012
http://www.plattretailinstitute.org





The 70 Percent Rule Revisited: Consumer In-Store Decision-Making and the Transformational Impact of Digital Signage

For a very long time, the mantra that “70 percent of purchase decisions are made in the store” has been circulated. The question asked here is: is it true?

The “70 Percent Rule” has been consistently advanced by those seeking to profit from the sale of all manner of in-store marketing devices – from POP displays to digital signage – as justification for these expenditures. Viewed another way, these expenditures are assumed to be effective because the marketing tools are located in-store. The implication is that in-store marketing activities are the most important factor impacting in-store purchase decisions.

The most often-cited support for the “70 Percent Rule” is a 1995 study initiated by Point-of-Purchase Advertising International (POPAI). This study was large in scope, encompassing data from a nationwide field intercept study of 4,200 consumers across 14 cities. In addition to its conclusion that “more than 70 percent of brand decisions are made in-store,” it was also advanced that “POP (point of purchase) displays are a significant decision influencer.” The study found that “in supermarkets, 42 percent of all brand purchases were made when one or more pieces of POP were present for a brand, [and] at mass merchandise stores, 35 percent of all brand purchases were made when one or more pieces of POP were present for a brand. From these two disparate conclusions, to-wit: a majority of in-store purchases are made in-store, and “in-store advertising heavily influences consumers in their purchases,” the fiction was born that there was a strong correlation between the two. Independent research, however, does not support this linkage.