What is the purpose of a shopping trip?
The purpose of a shopping trip is the reason the shopper came into the store. In retail this is called the shopping mission, and in a supermarket it usually falls into one of four types: a stock-up trip that covers most of the store, a fill-in trip to replenish a handful of categories, an urgent-item trip for one or two products, or a fresh-food trip focused on produce, bakery, butcher or fish. The purpose shapes the whole visit. A stock-up trip is long and usually made with a trolley, while an urgent-item trip is short and direct. That is why retailers adapt assortment, layout and in-store media to the mission that dominates each store and time of day. Shoppermotion does not ask shoppers why they came: it reads the purpose of each trip from its path, duration, shopping tool and matched receipt, and reports it in Shopper Insights.
A shopping mission is the goal of a particular shopping trip. The same store serves very different shoppers at different times, and the reason they came in says a lot about how they will behave: a stock-up trip covers most of the store, usually with a trolley, while an urgent-item trip is short and direct.
Shoppermotion uses four standard missions: stock-up (long trips covering most of the store), fill-in (medium trips to replenish a handful of categories), urgent item (short trips for one or two products) and fresh food (trips focused on produce, bakery, butcher or fish). Each visit is assigned a mission by a model trained on millions of trips, which takes into account variables such as time and day, shopping tool, duration, zones visited, stops, order of categories and the items on the matched ticket. See the shopping missions article.