Your brand's growth depends on what happens in the moments when people decide to buy. But the path to purchase has never been more fragmented. Consumers move between social media, search engines, review platforms, in-store displays, and peer recommendations, often in a single shopping journey. The resources they consult, the information they weigh, and the inspiration that starts them shopping have all changed dramatically in recent years. If your organisation doesn't have a clear, evidence-based map of how shoppers actually navigate from first spark to final transaction, your marketing spend, retail strategies, and digital investments are flying blind.
At Meraki Research, our shopper research reveals the real path your customers take to purchase, including the touchpoints that matter, the information that sways decisions, and the moments where brands win or lose. We study shopping behaviour across channels, categories, and occasions to give your team the insights and data they need to convert more shoppers, more often. Our work goes beyond describing the journey. We quantify the influence of every touchpoint so you can allocate resources where they'll drive the greatest return.
We've mapped the path to purchase for brands across grocery, consumer electronics, beauty, travel, and financial products. In one recent engagement, a global snack brand discovered that their in-store point-of-sale strategy was optimised for a decision process that only 30% of their shoppers actually followed. The remaining 70% were making their choices earlier, on a social media platform and through digital research, well before they reached the shelf. That single finding redirected R72 million in trade spend toward the touchpoints that actually drive conversion. Everything the brand thought they knew about how people bought in their category turned out to be only part of the story.
Our Approach: The Meraki Path to Purchase Framework
Shopper behaviour is not a neat funnel. People don't move in a straight line from awareness to purchase. They loop back, skip stages, get distracted, and are influenced by factors that don't show up in traditional research. Our research framework captures the real complexity of how shoppers navigate the path from initial inspiration to final transaction.
Phase 1: Journey Scoping and Hypothesis Mapping
We begin by defining the specific purchase journey under study. Not all paths are created equal. The path to purchase for a R90 impulse buy looks nothing like the path for a R90k considered purchase. The information sources, decision timelines, and influence points differ dramatically.
Our team works with yours to identify the key decisions we need to understand: What triggers the shopping occasion? Where do people seek information and inspiration? What resources do they consult? How do prices, promotions, and brand experience factor into the final choice? We build an initial hypothesis map that guides the research design, ensuring we study the right behaviours at the right moments along the path.
Phase 2: Multi-Channel Shopper Research
Capturing the complete path to purchase requires meeting shoppers where they actually shop, not just where your brand has visibility. Many brands only have data on the touchpoints they control. Our research captures everything, including the touchpoints you don't own. Our methods span:
- In-store observation and intercepts to capture real-time behaviour, product interaction, and decision-making at the shelf, including what people look at, pick up, put back, and ultimately choose
- Digital journey tracking to map how shoppers use search, social media, brand websites, reviews, and comparison platform experiences before and during the purchase process
- Mobile ethnography and shop-along diaries where people document their own shopping journeys in real time, providing a genuine dive into the unfiltered experience of navigating a category
- Quantitative path modelling to size each touchpoint's influence and identify the critical moments where brands can shift purchase decisions
- Post-purchase reflection interviews to understand how shoppers evaluate their choices after the fact and what drives repeat purchase or brand switching in subsequent journeys
This multi-channel approach captures everything from the first spark of inspiration to the post-purchase experience, including the resources and information sources shoppers rely on at each stage.
Phase 3: Touchpoint Influence Analysis
Not all touchpoints are created equal. A shopper might visit ten different information sources on their path to purchase, but only two or three actually changed their consideration set or final choice. Counting touchpoints without measuring their influence leads to strategies that spread investment too thin.
Our analysis identifies the touchpoints with genuine influence versus those that are merely present in the journey. We quantify the role of social media, in-store experience, prices and promotions, peer recommendations, and brand advertising at each stage of the path. We also measure how influence varies across shopper segments, because different people navigate the same category in fundamentally different ways.
This analysis produces a clear, quantified view of where your brand has the greatest opportunity to win, and where you're losing ground to competitors. It replaces gut-feel resource allocation with evidence-based investment strategies.
Phase 4: Activation Strategies and Channel Optimization
Research findings become specific strategies for winning on the path to purchase. We deliver channel-by-channel recommendations that address:
- Where to invest to capture shoppers earlier in their journey, during the inspiration and research phases
- Which platform and digital touchpoints deserve more attention and resources
- How to optimise in-store and digital merchandising for the way people actually shop
- What messaging resonates at each stage of the decision process and why
- How to use data and insights to personalize the shopper experience across channels
- How to coordinate marketing efforts across touchpoints so that each reinforces the others rather than operating in isolation
Every recommendation is tied to specific shopper behaviours we've observed and measured, not to generic best practices pulled from industry presentations.
When Shopper Research Is the Right Investment
This service is the right fit when your organisation needs to:
- Understand how shoppers actually navigate your category rather than relying on assumptions about the purchase journey that may be years out of date
- Optimize channel and trade spend by directing investment toward the touchpoints with real influence on purchase decisions
- Respond to shifting shopper behaviour, including the growing role of social media, mobile, and new digital platform experiences in the path to purchase
- Win at the shelf or on the digital page by understanding what drives final products selection in the moments that matter
- Align marketing and sales teams around a shared, evidence-based view of the shopper journey
- Launch new products with a channel strategy based on how your target audience actually discovers and evaluates new options
When it's NOT the right fit: If your primary question is about brand health or advertising effectiveness rather than the shopping and purchase journey specifically, our Consumer Behavior Research or broader Consumer Research offerings may be more appropriate. For organizations that need broader market landscape understanding before diving into shopper-specific research, Market Research Consulting can help scope the right approach.
What We Deliver
| Deliverable | Format | Typical Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Path to Purchase Map | Visual journey map with quantified touchpoint influence | 8-12 weeks |
| Shopper Insight Report | Executive presentation + detailed findings | Included |
| Channel Optimization Playbook | Strategies by channel with resource allocation guidance | Included |
| Shopper Segmentation (optional) | Segment profiles based on shopping behaviour and path type | 10-14 weeks |
| Digital Path Analysis | Platform-by-platform breakdown of the digital shopping journey | Included |
| Activation Workshop | Half-day session with marketing, sales, and insights teams | Within 2 weeks of report |
| Executive Summary Brief | Two-page summary for leadership circulation | Included |
Timelines depend on the number of channels, markets, and shopper segments under study. Most engagements deliver initial findings within 10 weeks.
Industry Applications
- CPG and Grocery: Mapping the path from meal inspiration on social media to product selection at the shelf, including the role of promotions, prices, and in-store merchandising in driving conversion at the critical last moments of the journey
- Consumer Electronics: Understanding the extended research and comparison journey, including the platform experiences, review sites, and resources people rely on for high-consideration purchases where the path can span weeks or months
- Beauty and Personal Care: Capturing the influence of social media creators, peer recommendations, and in-store experience on brand switching and trial, where inspiration increasingly starts in digital channels
- Travel and Hospitality: Revealing how people move from inspiration to booking, including the role of every platform, review site, and brand touchpoint in the path to purchase for both leisure and business travel
- Retail and E-Commerce: Identifying the crossover points between digital research and in-store purchase (and vice versa) to optimise omnichannel strategies and reduce friction along the path
- Financial Products: Mapping the considered purchase journey for products like insurance, lending, and investment, where information needs and decision timelines differ dramatically from everyday shopping and where trust is a critical factor at every stage