Accompanied Shops

One of the most effective ways to develop deep insight and understanding of key consumer behaviours is accompanied shops. By accompanying a participant as they carry out their routine shopping, whilst carrying out an in-depth interview, we can discover a huge range of different attitudes, ideas and patterns.

These can be incredibly beneficial when it comes to producing balanced and useful research on an idea, product or service. 

In a group or individual interview session, there simply isn’t going to be the genuine stimuli or natural routine of an individual going about their everyday business. There are plenty of idiosyncrasies that most people don’t think to mention in an artificial environment, these can come out when browsing in a store.

As a form of qualitative fieldwork, accompanied shops are fairly straightforward to carry out, but they do require a trained, experienced and knowledgeable facilitator or interviewer in order to yield the best results.

Accompanied shops can vary from highly-structured, set-question approaches, to more free-form, organic experiences, but there’s always a strategic, explorative element.

Asking the right questions, reading body language and prompting further explanation of ideas are all key to effective accompanied shops. Our interviewers take in-depth notes, which can be written up into a report, or simply passed on as is.

When Should Accompanied Shops Be Used?

• When exploring attitudes, behaviours and ideas in response to products and services in situ
• As part of a balanced research approach, allowing the client brand to deepen overall understanding and supplement other research data and information
• To explore thoughts and ideas that most participants wouldn’t think to say in an artificial environment

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