Shopworks Science’s goal is to service our clients with all of the benefits of our extensive experience and expertise, but without forcing them to pay for the the cost overheads ¬†of a ‚Äòbig brand‚Äô agency.

Our main clients are retailers and manufacturers, though we often work through intermediaries such as advertising, marketing or design agencies. Typically, we help our clients to better understand their markets in terms of:

• Who? Current and potential customer profiling
• What? Product development/selection and store design
• Where? Modality (online/physical or hybrid), selection and optimization, and catchment area evaluation
• How? Website and physical site format, features, functionality and service design specifications.

As appropriate, we utilise the full gamut of market and social research techniques and approaches (qualitative, quantitative and the new hybrid formats that are developing to address social media), to service clients as diverse as Snooze, St George Bank, Pandora Jewellery, Chocolatier Australia, The Laminex Group and Vodafone.  In addition, our network of international associates in the Shopworks Group (www.shopworks.co.uk), means that we have access to resources and experience covering 11 offices and servicing 17 countries.  While we are based in Melbourne, we frequently work in all parts of Australia, and have extensive experience in Asia.

We believe that three things set Shopworks Science apart:

The Customer Journey approach – We use our psychology backgrounds and long experience in services research to approach shopping as a cycle of activities that usually begins in the home with a recognition of need, progresses through a series of steps such as research, trade-off evaluation and purchase, and then finishes with the utilisation of the purchased product or service to address the original need.  We believe that it is only by breaking the customers’ journey into discrete steps, and recognising that different customer segments may follow different journeys, we can better understand how to increase sales, repeat purchasing and recommendation.

Leveraging existing knowledge – Every one of our projects starts with a thorough review of what is already known/hypothesized about the target market from existing market research and the collective wisdom within the client and their consultants/agencies.  By clarifying and putting into an organised format “What we already know”, any preconceptions and biases are exposed, and the scope of the project can often be refined or reduced thus delivering greater value for the client and usually resulting in a more successful research study.

Practical recommendations – Many of our projects are commissioned by, or are in conjunction with, various types of retail consultants.  Through our close involvement with retail designers, product development teams, advertising and digital agencies, and brand/marketing consultants, we have learned the types of insights that they need to perform their roles and are thus able to form an effective partnership to deliver the best possible end results for the end client (usually a retailer or manufacturer).

Our focus upon first building upon existing knowledge means that we are constantly scanning the internet and other sources for useful insights.  We typically publish 20+ links/week to materials that we believe are relevant for the Australian retail industry (via Twitter. LinkedIn and our website).