Understanding why customers stop shopping with you

The business question

Booths wanted to understand why some customers had stopped visiting its Penrith store and what might bring them back. The useful audience was recently lapsed shoppers: people with experience of the retailer who had made a different choice.

Simply asking whether the store was expensive would have missed the relationship between price, value and the overall shopping experience.

Reaching the right people

I designed the work around recruitment and direct experience of the store. When town-centre recruitment proved ineffective, we used targeted Facebook advertising, a screening survey and follow-up calls to reach suitable participants.

The discussion combined a store walk with a focus group. That let us examine people’s existing impressions alongside what they encountered in the shop, rather than rely entirely on memory.

Separating price from perceived value

The research showed that reconnecting with customers required attention to the overall experience, as well as price perceptions. Shoppers’ impressions of pricing could differ from the reality they encountered, while the experience itself influenced whether a visit felt worthwhile.

The recommendations connected those findings to the proposition: local convenience, distinctive food and drink, products that inspired people, and an experience that made those strengths easy to shop.

A wider customer research relationship

This was part of an ongoing partnership covering advertising effectiveness, healthy eating, café feedback and other retail questions. The healthy-eating work used observation and in-store intercepts to understand customer needs in the context of actual shopping.

The relationship began after I shared a Christmas retail perspective based on store visits and market observation. It developed into a substantial programme of qualitative and quantitative work shaped around Booths’ commercial questions.

What the work delivered

Booths received a clearer account of why customers had lapsed, where perceptions differed from experience and which aspects of its offer could support re-engagement. The output was a set of practical recommendations for customer communication and the retail proposition.

If customers are drifting away, this approach helps establish what needs to change before committing to a promotion, a price response or a broader repositioning.