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What shoppers need but never ask for

the small decisions shoppers make around fresh food, like pre-packed spinach over loose leaves, and what fairprice could do about them.

Client FairPriceDuration 3 months, 2018Role lead researcherTools eyetracker, google workspace
under nda: some details are kept vague to protect the client
( 01 ) Challenge

fresh food shopping looks simple.

it's a chain of tiny, half-conscious choices. people linger at the fish counter and leave with frozen fillets. they loop the wet market and walk into the supermarket anyway. fairprice wanted to find the friction and the blind spots.

( 02 ) How we listened

we watched people shop.

shadowing people in supermarkets, wet markets and heartland shops, watching decisions as they happened( 01 )
in-depth interviews with families, solo dwellers, retirees, daily cooks and people who rarely cook( 02 )
a survey of 1,000 people( 03 )
co-creation workshops with customers and fairprice staff in the same room( 04 )
  1. weeks 1 to 2
    Permissions & recruitmentsecured store and market permissions for shadowing, and briefed our vendor on households across life stages and cooking habits.
  2. weeks 2 to 5
    Shadowingfollowed shoppers through stores and markets wearing eyetracker glasses, so we saw where they looked as well as where they went.
  3. weeks 4 to 7
    In-depth interviewswith households across life stages and cooking habits, often the same people we had shadowed, so we could ask about what we'd seen.
  4. weeks 6 to 9
    Survey1,000 people, with quotas on household type and shopping channel.
  5. weeks 10 to 11
    Co-creationcustomers and fairprice staff in the same room, working through the friction points together.
  6. week 12
    Recommendationsa prioritised list of store changes, from signage to aisle layout.
( 03 ) What changed

upgrades across fairprice stores.

freshness cues like harvest dates and qr codes( 01 )
pre-packed produce revamped to meet fresh standards( 02 )
clearer packaging and signage( 03 )
local sourcing and sustainability stories moved up front( 04 )
fresh aisles laid out as places to linger( 05 )
( 04 ) Since then

fairprice kept asking, with more data.

fairprice now maps shopper needs with data, and its store of tomorrow programme (2025, with google cloud ai) is built around personalisation and less friction in store.

( ↗︎ ) Afterwards
Next track →
Who's actually buying, and why now