50 SOLUTIONS: GSK SHOPPER SCIENCE LAB, BRENTFORD August 2014
The world’s largest seamless touchscreen (5.32m x 2.55m) provides full visualisation of retail environments
of the Month
UNITED KINGDOM
Leading with technology R
Having reinvigorated its consumer healthcare division, the pharmaceutical giant wanted a facility that would deliver a quantum leap in its brands’ retail performance. Paddy Baker reports on the conception and delivery of a major project that won a Teamwork Award at our recent InstallAwards
etailers, and the manufacturers that supply them, are on a never- ending quest to
understand how shoppers behave in-store. How should products be best organised on shelves? What is it about the packaging that makes shoppers more likely to pick up this product rather than that one? Glaxo SmithKline, as well as being a major player in prescription medicines, also has a number of consumer healthcare brands, such as Sensodyne toothpaste, Panadol painkillers and Nicorette nicotine replacement – all with a strong element of science behind them. To improve the performance of these brands at retail, and to improve its working relationships with retailers, the company decided to create the Consumer Healthcare Shopper
Science Lab – a facility that uses audiovisual technology to facilitate and accelerate the study of shopper behaviour.
Wider experience “Our vision is to be fi rst and best in the FMCH – fast-moving consumer healthcare – category,” explains GSK IT director Russell Barrow. “So we wanted to create a point of diff erence, not a point of parity with our competitors. The starting point was not to look at the consumer goods industry, but look at what other industries do that we could repurpose. So on the visualisation side, it’s the VR technology that we’ve found in oil and gas, and automotive – taking all that thinking, all the underlying software, the technology, the work processes – and using that to bring to life the shopping environment.”
By using a virtual shop
environment in place of a full-size mock-up of a supermarket shelf or a pharmacy counter, GSK can get feedback on shopper reactions to potential new products much more quickly and easily – speeding the product development process and saving on costs – because, for instance, no dummy packaging has to be printed. Similarly, shelf layouts can be modifi ed and tested immediately. “We couldn’t tell you that this shape of bottle will increase sales by 1%, or that people will pay 5p more for this product, but we can tell you – particularly with comparative studies – that this shelf layout works much better than that one,” explains GSK’s Crispin Haywood, director of the Shopper Science Lab. The 10,000sqft Lab has
been designed to be brand- neutral, so that visiting shoppers do not know they are visiting a GSK facility. Additionally, the Lab hosts visiting retailers as well as GSK’s own staff , and can be branded with retailers’ logos and colours. In fact, says Barrow, 50% of the benefi t of the Lab is related to insight on shopper behaviour, and 50% to improved collaboration with retailers – for instance by having them on site to observe their own customers in action. The centrepiece of the
Lab is the world’s largest seamless touchscreen (5.32m wide by 2.55m high), which provides full 3D visualisation of retail environments. The size of the display was determined by the fact that it had to simulate either four bays of supermarket shelving with header boards, or a pharmacy counter with the
Installed Video
Cyviz bespoke projection screen
U-Touch Touch Frame Barco (projectiondesign) projectors
Sony SCNEP580 IP PTZ cameras
Sharp BigPad 80in touchscreens
Samsung ME46, ME55 LCD displays
Christie DWU-550G WUXGA projectors
Milestone video software Barco Clickshare units
Audio
QSC Q-Sys Core 500i DSP units QSC CX602V amplifi ers QSC AD-C42T ceiling speakers QSC AD-S32-T speakers Shure MX202B/N ceiling mics ClearOne Interact Pro conferencing system
Revolabs Executive HD wireless mic systems
Bose MA12 array speakers Bose MB4 subwoofer
Control AMX Enova DVX2155HD controllers
AMX NetLink NI-3100 and NI-2100 controllers
Apple iPads AMX TPI-PRO interface Iiyama 32in touchscreens AMX Modero MVP-9000 touchpanel
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