How it started

Henkel, the German chemical and consumer goods company, set itself the challenge to create a shopper journey where shoppers could interact with on- and offline touchpoints at any moment.

Therefore, Henkel wanted to truly understand consumer needs, information needs and emotions on all key touchpoints in the omnichannel journey.

How we inspired change

To tackle this challenge, we set up ‘Die neue Einkaufswelt’ community in France and Germany. After a ‘connecting-the-dots’ workshop with Henkel clients in both countries, a shopper journey map was created.

In a first phase, we used qualitative ethnographic immersion to define moments of truth across the journey, resulting in the identification of 11 key moments. In a second phase, we added quantitative techniques to the mix, and launched a hybrid study on the Square to gain extra in-depth understanding via in-context experience evaluation tracking. These short surveys were triggered every time participants found themselves in one of the key moments, using tools such as swiping and picture upload to gather relevant feedback with little participant effort.

How it lives on

The research programme uncovered the main moments of truth for specific Henkel categories. A total of 6,535 in-context journey moments were captured, often illustrated with pictures. We prioritised these moments and measured emotions per category.

For every key moment, Human8 provided clear guidelines on information needs, which emotions to support and which channel to use (online/ offline/ multichannel). These insights will fuel new service and communication ideation in the research programme.