• 70% of all purchase decisions are made in store.
• 68% of in-store purchases are impulse buys
• 68% of consumers are brand-switchers.
• Only 5% are loyal to one brand.

These numbers, which come out of a GMA/Deloitte research paper called “The Call for Shopper Marketing,” really bring into question how many retailers allocate their time and money in reaching out to consumers. All this advance effort to sell people on Brand X…and for what? They jump to Brand Z on a whim at the last second.

I’m sure it still makes sense to prime the pump and create awareness about products via online, direct, broadcast, outdoor and print. But with so many decisions — correction — with so many impulsive decisions happening in the aisles, it seems that we are insane not to focus more on the so-called last mile.

Why isn’t there a stampede among creative agencies to develop expertise in this burgeoning field of “shopper marketing?”

Consider two additional statistics, also in the GMA/Deloitte paper:

• Each week, 127 million customers visit Wal-Mart
• Each week, 68 million people on average watch ABC, CBS or NBC evening news.

So, how is Wal-Mart trying to influence all these millions, perhaps billions, of weekly impulse decisions? Of course, there are the usual mainstays of retail merchandising, such as coupon dispensers, end-cap displays and product sampling. Experiential marketing is also getting more play.

But it’s well reported that Wal-Mart and many other retailers are putting their money on digital signage: intelligent networks of in-store flat-panel displays that can be managed to deliver infinitely localized and relevant messages, using variable data such as:

• Time of day
• Day of week
• Seasons an holidays
• Customer language preferences
• Store traffic patterns
• Weather
• Market and economic conditions
• Local news events
• Inventory levels
• Product sales velocity
• Sales goals vs. actuals
• Proximity sensors
• RFID readers
• User inputs (voice, touch, cell-phones, etc.)

Digital signage holds much of the promise that excited many of us marketers in the early days of online marketing, when a collective light bulb went off and marketers realized how data could be harnessed to deliver ever more granular and relevant messages to prospects.

The difference is that digital signage all happens in the store — at the moment of truth, where, according to the research, expensive ad campaigns and brand loyalty initiatives come face to face with disloyal and easily distracted customers. Clearly, whoever has the ability to influence fickle consumers in the aisles will have a tremendous advantage.

Photo credit: Phil Romans