John Lewis

Basis led an ethnographic exploration of shopper behaviors and needs - to help the UK’s most recognised high street retailer plan for growth, and navigate a changing retail landscape.

Challenge

Retail conditions are the toughest they have been for over a decade. The high street is in turmoil. Multiple retailers are restructuring, or have gone into administration.

John Lewis & Partners came to us, to help them understand current shopping habits and needs, and to answer the critical question: where should we focus to secure our future?

Approach

John Lewis already held a lot of data on the retail state of play. But we needed to understand the 'why' which underpinned this, and how things might change in the future. That isn't something we can simply ask consumers – it can be difficult to recall past actions, to accurately describe current behaviors, and to reliably predict future ones.

We adopted a true ethnographic approach, with a variety of methodologies, to explore habits from all angles.

Across the journey, we spoke to over 200 shoppers across the country, and interviewed a number of industry experts.

Impact

We delivered an actionable, future focused, shopper needs model, that has fed into ongoing strategy development. The model has successfully identified key prioritization areas, and helped tailor John Lewis & Partners customer retention and attraction strategy - influencing decision making across all parts of the business.

We also produced a customer video summarising the key themes which has been cascaded throughout John Lewis & Partners and has helped to bring customers and their changing needs to life.