MEC adds some ‘Momentum’ to its planning

GroupM agency MEC chose the Cannes Lions platform to unveil Momentum, a proprietary research-based tool to understanding and quantify how consumers make purchase decisions. Momentum is expected to aid the agency's strategic media planning for brands, as consumers navigate the purchase cycle from the stage of ‘passive’ to ‘active’ bias, and from there on to action.

Billed as one of the largest global studies undertaken into the shopper journey and psychology of choice, Momentum has examined purchase decisions of over 100,000 consumers so far, across 11 markets and 12 product categories. This includes a pilot specific to Reliance Communications in India. The ‘Momentum’ project has been on for well over 18 months, engaging customers online to understand purchase behaviour qualitatively and quantitatively.

Momentum quantifies consumer bias by category and brand, informed spokespersons. Beliefs customers have and how they influence decisions, and the relative influence of communication messaging and touch points, is available in one study through ‘Momentum’, according to an official statement. 

Findings

One of the key findings unearthed by Momentum is the importance of the ‘passive stage’ of the consumer journey. The study reveals that people with a strong ‘Passive Stage Bias’ consider fewer brands, spend less time in the ‘Active Stage’, are less concerned with price when making their choice, and are happier with their decision after purchase.

Momentum will score a brand’s ‘Momentum’ against the competition and identify ways to convert it from the ‘passive’ to the ‘active’ stage, uncovering new opportunities for brand growth, according to the agency.

Melanie Varley, global chief strategy officer, MEC, said, “Momentum measures the whole purchase journey in a new way. It gets under the skin of how people make decisions, unpicking the beliefs, whether preconceived or not, that they have about brands and how these influence behaviour, and the effect of brand communication throughout this journey. Our Momentum studies provide highly actionable outputs and are exceptionally cost effective.”

“Our insight into the purchase journey means that we now must adopt a new approach to brand communication during the purchase journey. As the custodians of strategic comms planning we see it as our responsibility to bring this new thinking to bear for our clients,” she said.

‘Momentum’ has been envisaged as a tool to help MEC’s media planning process. It will command a premium from clients, but is not being viewed  as a standalone tool – for now.