SHOPPER INSIGHTS
UPSELLING, CROSS-SELLING AND SWITCHSELLING: WHAT ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES? NORRELLE GOLDRING LOOKS AT THE DIFFERENCES IN SELLING TECHNIQUES AND SOME OPPORTUNITIES FOR OFF-PREMISE LIQUOR.
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n past issues of National Liquor News I’ve discussed the relative scarcity in the offpremise of simple cross-selling techniques such as mixers for bottled spirits. Below is a short discussion of upselling, cross-selling and switch-selling – what they are, the differences between each, and some examples in offpremise liquor.
UPSELLING Upselling is about persuading the customer to buy a more expensive or upgraded item from the one they intended to buy. Upselling can also be based around product size and Average Weight of Purchase (AWOP). Convenience stores do this when you’re paying for the bag of chips or bar of chocolate by suggesting that you can get two for $X or the bigger option for $Y. In liquor there are opportunities based around understanding the customer’s occasion. For example, if it’s a BYO wine for dinner and the customer is out to impress friends you may be able to upsell them to a higher quality product, such as upgrading them from a $15
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Sauvignon Blanc to a $30 bottle such as Craggy Range. Or if it’s for a cocktail party, upsell them to a premium vodka from a mainstream vodka, again for the impress factor. Or you could upsell the customer on size; they may need the 1L vodka for their party rather than the 700ml.
CROSS-SELLING Cross-selling is effectively increasing basket size by selling products that satisfy additional, complementary needs that are unfulfilled by the original item. This is where the mixers for spirits come in. In convenience stores they try to sell you something at the register, such as ‘X is on special today, would you like some’. Again, understanding the customer’s occasion before they get to the checkout may assist in selling them additional items. If you know they’re buying for a party, offer a bundle of beer, wine, spirits, snacks and ice for example. In e-commerce, cross-selling may be utilised on product pages (‘people who viewed this also viewed…’, ‘people who bought this also
bought…’), during the checkout process, and in lifecycle campaigns. It can be an effective tactic for generating repeat purchases and demonstrating the breadth of your product catalogue to customers. Cross-selling can alert users to products they didn’t previously know you offered. In liquor this may translate for instance to ‘popular bundle buys’. This requires an understanding of your basket data – which products customers are buying together. (In a famous example, UK supermarket giant Tesco discovered the two most commonly co-purchased items were beer and nappies. The blokes were being sent to the store to get nappies and got beer while they were there. So they merchandised beer in the nappies aisle to take advantage of this behaviour).
SWITCH-SELLING According to Wikipedia, “Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud used in retail sales but also employed in other contexts. First, customers are ‘baited’ by merchants advertising products or services at a low price, but when customers
