Shelley E. Kohan (00:03.341)
Hi everybody and welcome to our podcast retail unwrapped and today I’m excited to have Matt Mueller back. Welcome back. You were here last year and you gave us some great tips last year. So I’m excited to have you back again.

Matt Mueller (00:19.694)
Thank so much for having me back. So excited to have another conversation with you. It was a lot of fun last time.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:23.505)
And it’s great. yeah, we always have fun together. We connect several times throughout the course of a year. And every time I have a conversation with you, I always learn something. So that’s what I love about chatting with you is I always learn something. And today is really interesting because today we’re going to talk about something that I think is very relevant. And that is hidden opportunities about uncovering what your customers can’t tell you. So we have all this data and we have all this information.

out there, so we have lots of data points, but what can we do with information that the customers aren’t telling us? So that’s what we’ll be talking about today. And of course, Matt, you are a global innovation strategist and consultant. You do some work with a lot of different companies. I know right now you’re doing some work with Rethink Retail, right?

Matt Mueller (01:13.346)
Yeah, we think retail on the advisory team there and able to impact different retailers around the globe and CPG brands and helping them figure out what should innovative strategies should they really be looking into and going deeper on. So hidden opportunities is a huge, huge just topic that I love talking about. I have a lot of passion behind like, know, getting into consumer psychology and understanding exactly why they do the things they do. So I think it’s gonna be a fun conversation today. This is like, you know, just

I love geeking out on this stuff, so it’s gonna be fun.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:44.351)
I know. And I think your self-proclaimed title is the mindful innovator, correct?

Matt Mueller (01:51.682)
That is correct. Yes. That all came from the book, The Mindful Innovator. And really it was from spearheading the beginning of an innovation team for a CPG brand, a national CPG brand, and starting that team and thinking about how innovation was supposed to be done. We created a process, a philosophy, and then fill the pipeline with all these cool things. Like it was in the deli side of the business. So it was like, you thinking about how do we create the Disney of deli? That’s all I wanted to do was create these really cool concepts and just

all this technology and after the first couple of years I realized that nothing was really working. We weren’t making an impact and we were trying all these really cool things and it wasn’t until I said okay we need to take a step back and be more mindful about what we were actually producing, mindful about the problems that we were trying to solve. That’s when we were able to actually have an impact. So that’s kind of where the mindfulness piece came into it was just really thinking about okay let’s slow down for a second before we go full speed and start solving problems. Let’s make sure we have it right first.

Shelley E. Kohan (02:51.339)
Yeah, I love that. I think that you mentioned something really important. You mentioned about, you know, taking a step back. So a lot of retailers are in it too close so they don’t see what’s in front of them. So talk to me a little bit about how are you? Why are we blind to these opportunities when they’re right in front of us?

Matt Mueller (03:02.733)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Mueller (03:08.272)
Yeah, it goes back to the saying that I’ve heard for a long time and I love this one. It’s that you can’t see the label of a bottle from the inside, right? It’s like you’re in it every single day. Like I go back to my retail roots back when I was like 18, 19 years old when I started managing delis. And I remember like just being in those stores every single day doing the best I could. Like I wanted to have the best customer service, the best profit margins and everything in my stores. But.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:16.045)
haha

Matt Mueller (03:35.182)
I would have like a DM come in or another manager come in and they’d be, hey, Matt, you have a sign on the wall that’s like three months out of date. I’m like, oh, whoops, I didn’t see it. I was blind to it, right? Because I’m in the store every single day. So when you’re in it every single day, it’s hard to take that step back and say, okay, well, what really is going on here? What do I really need to take care of? And a simple thing like, oh, I forgot to change the signage out. Completely gets missed because you just see it every day. You become blind to it.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:41.987)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:03.573)
Yeah, and I think that’s so true. I know working in retail for as long as I did, and typically I’d work for a company for a long period of time. It’s really not to you start doing consulting and working for many different companies and you’re out there and you’re meeting lots of people that a lot of these kind of hidden opportunities really spark up.

Matt Mueller (04:23.359)
Absolutely, yeah, it’s definitely I think when you’re when you get a little step back from it and when you’re you’re Changing your stimulus every single day that helps out a lot So it’s important to do other other tasks But like even your customers are like sometimes inside that bottle and when you ask them what they you think they need They can’t even answer you. It’s just it’s funny like a lot of consumers right now. We’re talking about sustainability, right? That’s a big thing sustainability is so important to consumers and it’s not like it’s not true, but

Shelley E. Kohan (04:37.409)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:45.805)
All right.

Matt Mueller (04:51.277)
they’ll say to you, well, I’m not going to make a decision on purchasing this because it’s not sustainable. And you start to then say, okay, well, our customers want things that are sustainable. And this is something that we focused in on the innovation team. Okay, well, our pre-sized products, they’re not in sustainable packages. We need to think about how do we actually create biodegradable packages, things that are going to be better for the environment, and then promote that on our packages. And we started to look at what we could do. And the cost of everything just drove through the roof.

I don’t know if we can afford this. At the end of the day, we then said, okay, well, let’s take a step back from this and see if this is really what our consumers want. And we started to like shop stores with them. And when we were shopping stores with them, they’d pick up the package and these are people that want a sustainability, they would purchase it. They weren’t saying that in the moment of purchase that they wanted the sustainable package. They just picked it up, put it in their cart, they paid for it. We then went into their homes with these packages. Yeah, so they’re not actually doing what they’re saying, but then you go into their home with these packages.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:44.141)
Interesting.

Matt Mueller (05:49.922)
And all of a sudden you’re seeing the struggle of them opening it up and the sealability of the package. they, try and rip it open. They’re trying to find the tab and they finally get it open. And then it’s just not closing properly. Like this, this is a pain point for me. This is why I usually don’t purchase this brand. And I just really wanted the flavor, but the packaging is a pain. So all of a sudden we learned that, it was about resealability. That was the real pain point for our consumers. That’s a way that we can get people to really think about purchase.

purchasing this in the moment, right? So that comes to the decision point. It’s about getting the consumer that already knows about that packaging and saying, you know what, I’m not gonna get this because it’s gonna be a pain in my butt to reseal. I’m gonna go with the tub, right? Or something that’s a little bit easier to close. So it’s all about creating a better closure rather than about creating sustainability, which is a whole lot cheaper.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:39.285)
You know, I’m so fascinated you brought up this example. I can actually give you two real life examples for me I mean I I try to like shampoo I like shampoo that is doesn’t have a lot of chemicals in it, right and there’s this one shampoo and it’s a great shampoo it’s it’s it’s You know doesn’t have a lot of chemicals in it. It’s really good for your hair and The problem is that the bottle is so wide so Circumference wise that it’s really difficult to use in a shower, you know, so I’m

Matt Mueller (07:03.276)
Mmm.

Matt Mueller (07:07.531)
Yeah, let’s look out of your hands.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:09.485)
Exactly. Or I just can’t get my hands around it and squeeze it. It’s just too big. And so I’m thinking to myself, as much as I really want to have, you know, not a lot of chemicals in my shampoo, I’m never going to buy the shampoo again, because I functionality, I can’t use it. So it’s so important when you look at it that way. And I do think a lot of consumers are out there talking about, you know, sustainability, but making other

Matt Mueller (07:25.185)
Yeah, so important.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:36.449)
decisions, not necessarily sustainable decisions. It’s kind of like you said, in the moment of shopping. So how are we going to balance these operational efficiencies with this emotional connection that consumers are having with product and packaging?

Matt Mueller (07:54.572)
Yeah, it comes down to just really taking that step back, right? And just before you start to go and chase that problem, just validate it, right? Go into your stores, check things out in consumers’ homes, and really just validate that this is truly a problem. Another great example of this was a grocery store that I was working with, and bakery sales weren’t doing too well in the store. And they’re like, OK, well,

let’s do a survey and find out what’s going on here with our consumers. They did a survey and they got great feedback on it and they were like, hey, look, it’s just times are changing. We need to eat healthier and bakery doesn’t have any healthier options. That’s why we’re not shopping there as much. So the bakery department is like, okay, well, we need to create a couple more skews here, probably about 10 % of our skews need to change over to healthier items. Let’s get granola bars and those healthy bites and stuff like that.

and put those in our bakery department to satisfy the healthier shopper to keep sales up. And after six months of testing this out, it wasn’t working, the sales were still sloping down and like, okay, well, we don’t know what do. So they let’s take a step back and let’s go into the stores. So we went into the stores with shoppers and it was just so illuminating. It was really just interesting to be able to stand in front of the store, set it up with the consumers, say, hey, look, this is what we’re gonna do today. You’re shopping here on your weekly fill. You’re coming in and doing a full shop.

And as you’re walking the store, I want you just to say what you’re thinking, like just to hear it out. And I’m gonna step back, I’m just gonna watch. And I’ll ask an occasional question, and that’s it. And you just step back and you actually walk through the stores with them and just watch what they’re doing. And as we were walking to the bakery department, we’d roll a card over there and I’m standing behind them, they’re like, okay, I’m taking a look around. I’m looking at the bread, I’m looking at the cookies. I don’t think I need anything here today. And they just keep on walking. And okay.

And I say, well, stop for second. Why did you keep on walking? You looked at the bread, you looked at the cookies. Why not purchase those? Well, I’m trying to eat healthier and I just didn’t see anything here that really caught my eye. Okay, cool. So eating healthier. Nothing caught my eye. We then take a walk down the store and next thing you know, they’re doing a B line for the cookie aisle. And next thing you know, Oreos and Cheez-Its are going into the shopping cart. I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s going on here? Like, why are these items going to the cart? Well, you know.

Matt Mueller (10:11.531)
I like to have something that’s like, know, indulgent every week, you know, on a Friday, just to kind of just reward myself, reward the family. So I like to get the Oreos and I know what to expect with those Oreos. Like I have a brand experience that I know what I’m going to get. Like, okay, cool. Now I’m starting to understand things. Let’s go back to the bakery department here. And we put the Oreos right next to the cookies. I’m like, okay, I want you to look at these two packages and tell you, you know, what’s going on in your mind when you look at these two. It’s like, well, the Oreos, I know exactly what I’m going to get, right? These are.

These are just the standard cookie that I’ve had in my whole life. But when I look at the bakery cookies, I’m looking at everything that’s around me and I’m not seeing anything here that’s telling me that this is going to be good. Like the bakery smells like a hospital cafeteria. It’s clean, I smell chemicals, it’s stainless steel. Nothing is being baked here. Like I could see the condensation on the cake so I know they just took those out of the freezer. They’re starting to be able to articulate all the reasons why they weren’t purchasing a bakery.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:00.095)
Interesting.

Matt Mueller (11:11.253)
And all of a sudden, we realized that we did not have a health problem. We had a craveability problem. They weren’t craving the cookies. That was the biggest issue that we had. So it was really interesting to see what consumers would really tell you when you put them in that moment, when you put them into that decision point. So what was happening with that bakery was that they were producing all of their products at 5 AM in the morning because operationally, that’s what’s efficient. Exactly.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:16.653)
I

Shelley E. Kohan (11:36.437)
Efficiency, that’s right.

Matt Mueller (11:38.99)
So we wanna be efficient, we wanna make sure we have all the cookies out in the sales floor before they get there. So we’re cooking them at 5 a.m., getting on the sales floor by like nine, and then people come in and start shopping the stores. And now all of a sudden, it just smells like the cleaners because you wiped everything down and everything’s done for the day and waiting for tomorrow. So that was creating a lack of crave. So how do we put sensory back into that bakery department? Well we said, well, all right, you can still do operations in the morning because that would be just nuts if we’re doing it in middle of the day. But what if we were to reserve some of that?

operation for the middle of the day. What if we were to cook chocolate chip cookies at 11 o’clock in the morning and like four in the afternoon? All of a sudden you would have this brown sugar and butter wafting through the store, wafting through the bakery, and now all of a sudden your crave factor goes up by 10 times. People started buying cookies all because we changed the time that we started cooking the cookies. So it was all about just creating that craveability.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:30.861)
That’s so interesting. And you know what, it’s a good lesson for all of us as we’re shopping through stores or executives walking the stores is to really put that customer lens on, but actually talk through the journey. Because I never do, when I’m in a store, just walk through the store and I’m not really like doing what you said, which is sitting there thinking about, okay, why did I go over here? Why did I go over there? How come I don’t like that? How come I, so maybe that’s a good lesson learned for executives as they’re, I know a lot of the executives that are visiting stores are,

Matt Mueller (12:47.969)
Yeah.

Matt Mueller (12:54.337)
Mm-hmm.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:00.727)
putting the customer lens on, but I don’t even think we know what that customer lens is, right?

Matt Mueller (13:05.677)
Yeah, yeah, we definitely, I think we’re definitely trying. mean, people have tell us all the time, like we need to go into our stores, right? We need to think like our customers, we have to have some empathy. And we think we have that, but we really can’t. We are always biased. We always have our own bias on things and we’re gonna be going off of the data that we have. So we know that’s what sales are. We know what consumers are saying and we have our own pre-

pre-definitions of exactly what we’re expecting in this spot, right? So we’re gonna come at it from our angle, even if we’re trying to put ourselves within those consumer’s shoes. But it comes down to walking it with the consumer. I think that is the key that we are forgetting is that we can’t just walk the stores ourselves and think like the consumer. We need to watch the consumer and really observe. 85 % of all the decisions that we make as human beings are all subconscious. 85%, that’s a lot. That’s all of our decisions pretty much made.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:56.522)
It is a lot, yeah.

Matt Mueller (13:58.68)
But the only way to find out how we’re making those decisions is to get inside the mind of that consumer because we’re all different. We all have different upbringings. We all have different triggers. We have to figure out what is happening with that consumer in that moment. And the only way to do that is to watch them very closely and then to probe and ask that why question. Why is so important. And not just the first why, but the second and third why. Thinking about that bakery, I asked the consumer in the bakery room, why did you pass by? Well, it’s because of this.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:26.221)
I

Matt Mueller (14:26.977)
then why did you buy those Oreos? Well, it’s because of that. Okay, why Oreos versus this? And it was like that third why that finally all of sudden uncovered that insight. So it’s always asking why and asking it over and over again.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:35.361)
Yeah, that’s interesting.

Yeah, and I know we’re going to talk about in a second, you know, how do you how can you get the customers tell you what they don’t even know themselves, right? So I know there’s a lot of philosophy behind that. But the other thing I want to say is going back to like this operational efficiency and I’m to use a beauty product. So when we’re looking at how to create emotional connections and, you know, do the right thing and try to service the customers, we also have to be careful not to value engineer ourselves out of a product.

Matt Mueller (14:47.02)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (15:09.547)
And what I mean by that is, you know, I use this one sunscreen for like 15 years, my favorite sunscreen, was mineral sunscreen. I love the way it applied. It was great product. It’s an absolute hero product, but they value engineered the packaging and the top doesn’t stay on it. I have two different ones and the top doesn’t stay sealed. So maybe that’s not as a big deal in some products, but sunscreen that you’re packing in a bag that you have, that you use a lot. You don’t want that leaking.

Matt Mueller (15:25.686)
you

Shelley E. Kohan (15:38.445)
I will literally just will never buy that sunscreen again. So I went from this evangelist consumer, you know, love this product. I told 20 people about this product. Now I won’t buy it just because they value engineered something out of the product. So I think we have to be cautious of that, right?

Matt Mueller (15:38.881)
care.

Matt Mueller (15:53.046)
Ouch. Yeah, that’s definitely a big driving factor for consumers is packaging and how it feels in their hand and how it holds up, especially when you’re buying a premium product. The package should be premium as well. So yeah, definitely it’s very important to make sure that your package is doing everything that it should be doing. And an interesting example of that one was with GSK. GSK has a Voltaren, Advil, a bunch of different brands, but they were working with Voltaren.

And they created a really interesting top where, well, Voltaren is for people with arthritis. And they have hard tops. And so if you have arthritis in your hands and you’re trying to open this top, it can be really a struggle. So they created a top that actually had a little like hatch in the top of it where you could just take it and put it on the counter and it pops open really easily. So now you don’t have to use your hands, your fingers to open it. All you have to do is use the countertop to open the lid. So it’s very purposefully done.

Shelley E. Kohan (16:25.398)
Okay.

Matt Mueller (16:47.661)
And it’s putting value into the package because of the purpose, like of what the product is, who it’s for, and it’s just being really purposeful about the things that you’re doing for your product, including not only the product itself, but also the packaging of that product. So important.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:04.653)
And I know you’ve done a lot of research on ethnographic research. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is? I mean, it’s so important to how do you get the customer to tell you what they can’t tell you?

Matt Mueller (17:09.133)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Mueller (17:17.121)
Yeah, I’m a geek and I went back to school just to learn like the technical rigor that it takes to do ethnographic research. So starting the innovation team and working on that group, we didn’t know what ethnographic research was. But I wound up working with a brilliant guy named Martin Lindstrom. He’s written like eight bestselling books. One of the books is Small Data. Another one is Biology, which is taught in campuses all across the US and the world.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:24.524)
Wow.

Matt Mueller (17:46.098)
And it gets into really understanding what are those small little things that are happening in the consumer’s mind, like the subconscious piece of it, right? So working with him side by side, going into homes of consumers, really got me just so excited to learn more about it and seeing the psychology behind consumers. So that was kind of like my introduction to ethnography. At the time, I had no clue what the hell that word meant. I was just like, wow, what are we doing here? This is really interesting.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:10.156)
Hahaha.

Matt Mueller (18:13.165)
going back to school and learning about it and then being able to execute it for my clients now and executing it on the innovation team, it was just so eye opening. So ethnographic research is basically qualitative research where like you hear a lot of times like surveys, right? That’s quantitative research, quantity, right? A lot of data that’s gonna help us make our decisions. And that’s usually how our companies make decisions is through those large pieces of data because we feel more confident with it. Ethnographic research is qualitative research and it goes back to like the

early 1800s when we started using this methodology of really just getting really just steeped into the culture of whatever it is that we are studying. So this was originally done like in the in the West Pacific, like on small islands, and we would go and study cultures of all these different native tribes. And a person like a old white guy from England would go there on the island and try to blend into this little, you know, tribe that’s, you know, in middle of the ocean. And

they would just live with the tribe for months. And what they would do is they would just try to start to build a relationship with the tribe people and really just understand what it was like to be in that tribe and just build a rapport, observe, see what they were doing, what was their cultures really like, and how their decisions were different than the decisions that other cultures really made.

But you wouldn’t be able to do that if you were to put them into a focus group or bring them over to England and talk to them. You have to go there. And that’s what’s so important about ethnographic research. It’s going there into the wild. And just really, if we need to find out how a consumer is thinking when they’re making a decision, we need to go to the store and talk to that consumer. We need to find the exact, screen that consumer out while we wanna talk to mothers that are, you

mothers that are high income to find out how are they shopping at grocery stores, we need to go to the store with them. Or if we want to know how they decide how they’re going to do a shopping list, we need do it in their home and go into their houses and then say, okay, what are the decision factors that are coming into play there? So it’s really about just being in that spot where your consumers make the decisions and then just being a part of that environment, blending in.

Matt Mueller (20:30.785)
really just trying to fit within that piece of it and making those observations and not just asking a battery of questions like, I have a list of 10 questions, let me ask you these real quick. No, it’s just about having a casual conversation about digging deeper and being really curious. That’s the key to ethnographic research is just being curious and asking those questions, following up on those questions and just following the lead of your consumer. One of the best pieces of advice, I’m sorry, Shelly, but one of the best pieces of advice I got was to…

Shelley E. Kohan (20:53.504)
It’s, yeah, now go ahead.

Matt Mueller (20:59.019)
realize that your consumer knows everything and you know nothing. Even if they know nothing, it’s just, to put it all away, like, no. Whatever they say is gold, it’s absolutely a genius, and you should be writing a book about this one person. So just take everything that they’re saying as gospel.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:03.96)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:16.408)
think it’s interesting, I’ll give you a talk about refrigerators and ice dispensers. Like, why did it take us like 40 years to figure out that the ice dispenser and when you’re trying to get ice out, the cup should be flat, not at an angle. Like, how long did that take? And I’m like, why didn’t I ever think of this? Like when they’re designing refrigerators, but I think that’s what they do. They go into the home and they’re watching, you know, the use case, that’s how we got the beverage centers now and the refrigerator. So I think a lot of the manufacturers

Matt Mueller (21:30.209)
Yeah.

Matt Mueller (21:42.743)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:45.581)
refrigerators and freezers have spent a lot of time doing what you just said, being in that moment and watching and doing and asking questions, all that’s important. But can you tell us, can you maybe give our audience some tips on maybe some small actions that they can take, things that they can do now to kind of gain some of these insights?

Matt Mueller (21:50.369)
Yes.

Matt Mueller (21:53.968)
so important.

Matt Mueller (22:06.305)
Yeah, it’s not that complicated, which it sounds complicated. I went back to school for it, yes, but it’s not that complicated. I think the first thing that we have to do is really just think about who do we really wanna study? What are the big problems that we’re trying to solve? And then just going into the stores and making observations. Don’t ask questions, just go into the stores and just make observations. Just really be curious. I think that’s the key is bringing your curiosity.

to that store and just walking the stores and understanding how people are interacting in that space. If we’re looking to find out, I guess one I can kind of attach this to is that we were talking to high income families and mothers in home to find out how they shop because they were the primary shoppers. They did all the grocery shopping so we needed to learn what different trips they were going on. And when we were doing that in the home,

Shelley E. Kohan (22:57.016)
Heh.

Matt Mueller (23:01.793)
She was looking for, like they were looking for dinner stuff within their freezer to see what they were gonna take out for the day and they realized, they didn’t have anything for dessert and it was Friday and they wanted some dessert so they call up the husband and say, hey, can you pick up ice cream on the way home? All of sudden we realized that there was a purchasing decision that they were not involved in and that was dessert. This was like the dad on a mission. The dad on a mission was a whole new trip that we did not realize that was there. So we said, okay, let’s walk the stores with these fathers and.

What we do is first we just went in without going in with the father, we just observed the freezer section and looked at ice cream and see how are people shopping over here. We kept on seeing that what was happening here was that, see men come down the aisle in the afternoon time, look around, scan the aisles, they would get a tub of ice cream, sometimes two tubs of ice cream, then they would go over to the condiment space where they have the sprinkles and the nuts and the Hershey syrup and all that stuff, and all of sudden they have these two, you know.

pints of ice cream and they’re pulling off the Hershey’s and the sprinkles. and then they saw a good deal and they wanted to grab a bag of potato chips that would buy one, get one free. And all of sudden, next thing know, they had their arms full of products and they were trying to get to the register. And eventually you see them looking and saying, well forget it. I can’t get those because I have too much in my hands. wow, like data on a mission is really interesting. Like we could start seeing some interesting factors of them coming in for the ice cream, but they’re not just purchasing ice cream. There’s a lot more going on. But it all came through just going into the stores and observing the space.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:12.494)
Matt Mueller (24:27.863)
that we thought that might be an opportunity. So first is observation. Now we wanted to get really curious and understand what was really happening in the minds of that consumer. So we started walking stores with those dads. So just take three, five fathers that fit the demographic and walk the store with them. Observe them on that dad on a mission trip. Say, hey, your wife just called you. She wants you to get dessert. You’re going to the store. What do you do?

and we go and walk those stores with consumers and you can see them walking to the freezer section, scanning the aisles and seeing what they were going to purchase. And you could start to ask the questions and just say, why did you pick that ice cream? Well, what’s going on in your mind right here, right now at the condiment? Well, know, ice cream is great, but I wanna get some of these sprinkles because, you know, Suzy really loves sprinkles and it’s colorful and it’s more fun. I wanna create more, you know, quality time out of this experience of making sundaes. interesting, okay.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:03.916)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Mueller (25:21.143)
Well let’s go here. Well Chips, know Jack really likes Chips and I wanted to get these for him because he’s not really much of a sweet tooth. All of sudden you see like Dad was trying to be a hero. It wasn’t like he was there just to get ice cream. He was actually trying to be a hero and we were setting him up for failure. Yeah, so I was like what can we do? So it was a hidden opportunity right in front of us of a shopper that we did not know existed but it came through observation and saying why. Which led to the business impact and the strategy of well let’s put.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:35.874)
That’s great. Yeah.

Matt Mueller (25:49.506)
hand baskets out in the freezer section by the condiments so dads can pick up those baskets and load them up with whatever they want that they think that that’s gonna make them look like a hero when they get home. And it was like accompanied that basket with a sign that says, know, be a hero, bring home all the best desserts, something like that. can’t remember the exact words on the sign, it was just tied to that one mission and it was executed all through observation, being curious and asking why.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:07.67)
I love it.

Matt Mueller (26:15.309)
And getting out of your presumptions of, dad doesn’t shop stores, it’s all on the mom.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:20.684)
I love how that is because I have to say, you know, I don’t know why more grocery stores don’t put carts or little baskets halfway through the store. Cause I’m, that person. I’m like, I’m going in for two things. I don’t need a little basket. have four things in my hand and now I can’t, I literally can’t buy anything else. It’d be great to have that sprinkled about. So I totally get that same with apparel even.

Matt Mueller (26:29.997)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Mueller (26:38.967)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (26:43.49)
You know, in stores, there’s, you know, have your arms are full. You only have so many things you can log around the store before you go in the fitting room. Once you’re in the fitting room, you’re done. You’re not, you’re not going back in the fitting room. So figuring out kind of some of these things to help consumers in their shopping journey, I think is very useful.

Matt Mueller (26:43.745)
Yeah.

Matt Mueller (26:53.1)
Yeah.

Matt Mueller (26:59.837)
And it all comes down to watching their patterns. Like, you what are they doing in the store and how are they walking? And just being an investigator. That’s like the fun thing about it. It’s like you go into the store with that mindset of I’m gonna put my Sherlock Holmes hat on and I’m going to just watch and see what happens in the store. And all of you can see, okay, I should put baskets over here or I should put a sign over there. Or maybe we need to change the lighting. There’s so many little things that we can change in our store.

So many things that we can control that we’re not controlling. And meanwhile, we’re worried about tariffs and we’re worried about all these other things that we can’t control. But we can actually make, yeah. So let’s focus on the things that we can control in our stores with our products, with our packaging. Because if we can do that, that’s where we can actually make a difference. Like putting those baskets in stores, it wasn’t trivial. It created like a 20 % uplift on those shoppers in the stores. Because all of a sudden, now that we’re putting that additional item in their basket, so there’s real impact that can happen.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:29.358)
I know, right? It’s crazy.

Matt Mueller (27:53.473)
just from watching your customers.

Shelley E. Kohan (27:55.811)
I love it. And Matt, maybe, maybe the new job title coming up is going to be Chief Ethnograph Officer.

Matt Mueller (28:01.933)
yes, please sign me up.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:03.854)
Do you have any closing thoughts for our audience before you leave us?

Matt Mueller (28:11.445)
Yeah, so really it comes down to like, please, please just make observations in your stores. Take a walk. I know we get to those stores, but just have an open mind, be curious, and if you need help understanding how your team can do this, I have a free guide that’s available on my website. It’s at themindfulinnovator.com backslash hidden, and you can pick up your free playbook on exactly how to set this up. It’s a four step process, really easy to start doing ethnographic research in your stores right now.

And if you need any help with that and you have any questions, please just reach out to me on LinkedIn at Matt Mueller Innovation.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:47.16)
Great, thank you Matt. It’s always a pleasure having you and thank you to our listeners. We appreciate your support. If you have any suggestions, please go to therobinreport.com and contact us and give us your suggestions. Thanks so much.

Matt Mueller (29:00.738)
Thank you, Shelly.