Use caseMap the path to purchase
Map how shoppers get from the moment a need appears to the purchase itself, with buyers who finished online and in store heard in balance, and share one map with the retail partners who sell for you.
Shoppers rarely follow the funnel on a marketing slide. Their paths are reconstructed one purchase at a time, from whatever set the shopper looking to the moment they paid.
Recruitment finds people who bought in the category in the past month and fills separate quotas for those who completed the purchase online and those who completed it in a store, and screens each one for fraud.
The brief states what counts as the trigger, such as a product running out or a life event, and what counts as the purchase, so every interview starts and ends the journey at the same points and paths compare cleanly.
A planned weekly grocery trip, a replacement bought in a hurry and a first purchase in the category follow different routes, so the team draws a separate map for each occasion the business wants to win.
The world's most ambitious teams research with Pulse.
GrowwYour team draws the map from Pulse's interviews and themes, then ties each moment to the team that can act there: media, the store team or the website.
Shoppers recall which brands made their first list, which fell off and why, and what settled the final choice, so the map shows the points where a brand is won or lost.
Shoppers say which sources actually changed their mind, from search and reviews to a friend's advice or a sales associate, and which they saw and ignored on the way.
Some moments on the map feature rivals and never your brand, such as a comparison site or the aisle where shoppers make a last switch, and each becomes a specific gap for marketing or retail to close.
A path to purchase is the sequence of steps, channels and influences a shopper moves through from recognizing a need to buying and beyond. Funnel models describe a narrowing from awareness to purchase, while McKinsey's work on the consumer decision journey describes a looser loop, with brands added and dropped during active evaluation and a post-purchase phase in which experience shapes the next choice. Research combines recall with observation: interviews and surveys capture the path as recent buyers remember it, diaries record steps as they happen, and shop-alongs and digital analytics show behavior directly. Paths differ by category, occasion and channel, so studies segment by occasion, such as planned versus impulse, and compare buyers who finished online with those who finished in store. The output of path-to-purchase research is a map of decisive moments, each with the brands in play and the influence that moved the shopper.
Media planners weigh channels by reach as well as influence. A survey across a larger group of recent buyers counts how often each source was consulted, so the planner can set reach beside the influence shoppers described in interview.
Retailers now sell ad space on their own sites. Grouping online finishers' accounts of their last few minutes shows the brand whether a sponsored listing ever changed the final pick, before it buys that retailer's ad space.
Some shoppers research online and pay in a store, and some do the reverse. Once each path is marked with where the research happened and where the money changed hands, the e-commerce and store teams can see where one hands a shopper to the other.