I’ve got another bee in my bonnet and like an incessant buzz on a summer’s day – it’s starting to annoy me.

I’m amazed at how a whole ‘new’ marketing category is being built around something most of us do everyday of our lives – shopping.

Specialist agencies are springing up, large agency groups are investing in shopper marketing expertise and you can spend a small fortune on conferences and seminars which promise to share learning and experience, but are more often simply sales platforms for learned speakers.

I read about the importance of ’understanding how one’s target consumers behave as shoppers, in different channels and formats, and leveraging this intelligence to the benefit of all stakeholders, defined as brands, consumers, retailers and shoppers’.

I’m encouraged to think shopper not consumer with an example of someone buying babies’ nappies to underscore this brilliant insight into discovering the silver bullet to success.

But is it really new?

If you take the time to speak to the Marketing Directors  of the major High Street and shopping centre brands do they believe that ‘shopper marketing’ is the answer to their prayers…or is it just effective retailing marketing?

Let’s think for a minute – retailers want to grow profitable sales – and they do this in many instances with a focus on growing category sales. They run marketing programmes designed to increase traffic by increasing consumer penetration and increasing frequency of visit. Of course encouraging traffic has little value if people don’t spend money so they also employ tactics to encourage people to convert traffic to sales and to increase spend levels too….nothing new here!

Brand owners want to encourage profitable sales & they need distribution and presence in retail to achieve this – (OK let’s put aside on-line sales for now – though growing quickly, on-line still represents a relatively small percentage of total sales in most categories). So to be successful brand owners need to demonstrate how sales of their brand will help build the retailer’s sales and profit by better meeting consumer needs – with a focus on incremental, not just cannibalising competitive sales.

Consumers have grown to expect choice (largely thanks to oversupply and a lack of real differentiation) – and of course retailers meet this need for choice generously.

The challenge is how to make sure everyone wins…the retailer, brand owner and consumer.

When faced with a marketing challenge I always start with thinking about people – and what they need to make decisions – preferably to the benefit of the brands we’re representing at that particular moment.

Some consumers have pre-determined purchase intentions and just want to get into a shop, buy and escape. Others browse, sometimes with intent to purchase, sometimes because it’s something to do – part of the social calendar.

Some are susceptible to interruption, to new ideas – some simply there to enjoy the entertainment of shopping.

Some want advice and guidance – some are confident to find out for themselves.

And, of course, the same person may have different needs for different categories and in different contexts.

Shopper marketers will have us all believe that by using a magical combination of science and art, they can build sales – and indeed they may be able to do so.

But retailers have long recognised these different shopper needs and developed sophisticated merchandising and communications programmes to optimise traffic flows, to manage customer journeys, to prompt, to tempt – all in the interests of maximising spend.

(And if we’re lucky they have renewed focus on good, helpful, positive and enthusiastic customer service – thank you Mary Portas for reminding us all of the importance of good human behaviour and interaction.)

So is shopper marketing anything really new? I don’t really think it is – and in this context I don’t understand the buzz.