DIY retail market research: seeing the store through shoppers’ eyes
When a research consultancy needed participants for a DIY retail market research project on behalf of a major UK home improvement retailer, the fieldwork location was especially close to home: a DIY store here in Cheltenham, just around the corner from Angelfish HQ.
The project combined a short video pre-task with one-hour accompanied shopping sessions. Participants completed a pretend shopping mission alongside a researcher while wearing eye-tracking glasses, which recorded where they looked as they moved through the store.
The researchers could hear what participants said while also seeing where they actually looked. What caught their eye? What did they walk straight past? And how did they find their way around the store?
We needed a broad mix of frequent and infrequent DIY shoppers, including younger adults without children, families, older shoppers and empty nesters. Everyone had recently completed, or was planning, a home improvement project. The sample also included people with different attitudes towards sustainability when choosing DIY products.
Recruiting around one store naturally made the available pool smaller. Participants also needed to feel comfortable wearing the glasses and talking through their decisions as they shopped. We used several routes to find the right people, combining invitations to our opt-in community with targeted paid social and a local refer-a-friend campaign.
The initial response skewed female, so we asked suitable applicants whether a male partner or family member might be interested and offered a £10 referral thank-you. That simple, personal approach helped us create a better-balanced sample without loosening the criteria.
Across the two-week fieldwork period, 26 participants completed both stages of the research. When last-minute changes cropped up, our team acted quickly to keep everything on track.
Together, the accompanied shopping sessions and eye-tracking glasses helped the researchers understand what participants said, what they actually looked at and how they made their way around the store.
93%
Completion Rate
Eye tracking
Eye-tracking glasses show where shoppers look, what grabs their attention and how they move around a store.
“This was such fun to take part in! I enjoyed wearing the goggles as I pretend shopped the store. The researcher was expert at listening to and condensing my views.”
Angelfish participant
Services provided: Participant recruitment and pre-task management
