ATLANTA -- One day it's a convenience store. The next it might be a quick-service restaurant. And on another day, it might be a drug store. What it is at all times is the small space in The Coca-Cola Co.'s now 7-month-old Shopper Experience Innovation Center (SEIC).
Opened just blocks from Coke's headquarters in Atlanta in May, the SEIC is a place for Coca-Cola and retailers to test product placement, promotions or combo opportunities in "a retail-realistic environment" without going through the hassle of resetting a real store and risking real sales volume.
"We want to validate our pipeline of retail opportunities," said Ron Hughes during a recent media day at the SEIC. "It's our way to test future-oriented opportunities by bringing customers in and seeing how they react to them."
It's also part of Coca-Cola Co.'s effort to "be the best of any CPG [consumer packaged goods] company in innovation," the director of shopper experience innovation for Coca-Cola Refreshments told CSP Daily News.
The 15,000-square-foot facility hidden in a "highly secure, undisclosed Atlanta office park" in northwest Atlanta with no Coca-Cola signage includes a mock "boulevard" with shopping-mall "retail cues" that aim to give test shoppers the realistic feeling of heading out on a shopping trip. A large area can serve as a grocery or value store, or, for larger c-store boxes, a convenience store. A smaller area serves as a more typical c-store, a QSR or a drug store. It includes a gasoline pump out front and a drive-thru in the back to be used as necessary.
For general tests of beverage sets, product placement or even promotional signage effectiveness, Coca-Cola has developed a logo and signage for its mock "Marketplace" grocery brand and "FreshStop" c-store brand. Tests run in these environments might become part of the Coke trademark group's suggested sets for retailers. But Coca-Cola will willingly go as far as setting the areas to be replicas of a chain's actual store to test more specific combo offers or promotions. In essence, the SEIC allows Coca-Cola and retailers to run trials of merchandising ideas, to "incubate them in the SEIC before testing them for real in the actual retail site," Hughes said.
"The SEIC is a dynamic, multi-channel facility where we collaboratively create innovative and irresistible shopping experiences that will truly drive growth for the company and our customers," Hughes said. "It's a catalyst for creating a pipeline of game-changing, insights-driven solutions that we can deliver to the market near-term and over the next 10-plus
years."
"Our goal is to create irresistible shopping experiences," said Eileen Thanner, vice president of the Commercial Capabilities Center of Excellence for Coca-Cola Refreshments. "It can't just be: 'How do we get the consumer to buy more Mello Yello?' It's got to be more about: 'How do we drive more traffic? How do we get them to buy more during a visit?'."
The SEIC's range of opportunities include:
- Shopper insights development through focus groups, in-depth interviews, shop-alongs and shopper immersion.
- Concept/solution reviews, including testing and validation for packaging, messaging, POS, fixtures, displays and store layouts.
- Operational testing encompassing a range of solutions, such as shelf set and space planning, as well as prototype installation, development and execution .
"The realistic retail settings enable in-environment learning and insight generation that will lead to more innovative designs, higher-impact solutions and improved ways to work with our customers," said Hughes in a press release. "Learningsfrom the SEIC can create truly unique and engaging in-store experiences thatdrive revenue."
Among the advantages the SEIC is designed to offer:
- Decreased development costs.
- Faster speed to market.
- Proactively identify and address potential challenges before a solution is placed in-market.
- Deeper insights that inform and guide innovation solution development, including real-time/space shopper attitudes, behaviors and emotional responses to choreographed stimuli and environments.
- Solutions that more effectively address shopper and customer needs.
- Enhanced innovation and insights capability across the organization.
Since its debut, the SEIC has played a role in development and refinement of numerous innovations, including:
- The groundbreaking new Beverage Aisle Reinvention (BAR) system, to be piloted by a prominent regional supermarket chain.
- Solutions for c-stores, such as the new On The Road Again (OTRA) cross-category merchandiser (pictured), currently in test with the Kum & Go convenience store chain in Iowa.
In addition to its designated purposes, the SEIC can be used for employee training, as well as filming videos and commercials. "We've only begun to tap into the SEIC's potential," added Hughes.
"The SEIC is an organic outgrowth of The Cola-Cola Company's ever-expanding expertise and capabilities in shopper marketing," said Hughes. "Our objective is to become our customers' most valued supplier, and this facility amps up our ability to do so."
Coca-Cola, Atlanta, is the world's largest beverage company, featuring 15 billion-dollar brands, including Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Coca-Cola Zero, vitaminwater, Powerade, Minute Maid, Simply, Georgia and Del Valle.
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