Aside from excitement related to the Olympic Games (see previous blog post), the British nation is feeling a bit sorry for itself. At the end of April 2012, it was declared to be in a double-dip recession and the unemployment rate over Q4FY11 was at its highest since 1995. Pretty grim, and this is for a nation which doesn’t always see the glass half full at the best of times.

All this has had a substantial impact on UK retail; a -2.3% slump was reported at the end of Q1FY12. The Technical Consumer Goods (TCG) market in particular was extremely disappointing (according to the latest TEMAX report (1) ). Market volume fell by -7.2% year-on-year which was the lowest Q1 turnover in the past four years. The only growth was in the IT industry, which is largely attributable to innovation.

In an age when consumers research their purchases thoroughly online, talk to their friends for recommendations, and test out their potential purchases in store, exactly what role do store staff have to play beyond facilitating the experience? Recent research by GfK shows that the suitable mix of in-store recommendations and demonstrations, achieved by store staff training, can be highly effective at increasing sales.

A new GfK research programme has provided some unique insights into the ROI of store initiatives by combining mystery shopping results with individual store-level sales data. The programme reveals how the in-store experience translates into sales and shows the average uplift in sales resulting from different types of in-store activity. This is highly useful for brands that want to understand how to prioritise in-store marketing budgets, benchmark against competitors, negotiate better rates for display space, and calculate the ROI on in-store marketing spend.

So what are some of the key findings of this programme that are useful for marketers?