How to influence retail buyers with consumer insight

Retail buyers are spoiled for choice. With thousands of products competing for limited shelf space, the odds are stacked against brands. That’s why standing out is key – and consumer insight is the tool to achieve it.

Consumer insight doesn’t just show what shoppers want; it provides the evidence you need to prove to retail buyers that your product is a stronger choice. It shows that your brand understands the market, has a clear value proposition, and meets a proven demand. In this guide, we explore the step-by-step framework for using insights to influence retail buyers, and show you how to build a retail pitch that wins.

TL;DR

• Consumer insight helps prove demand and reduce risk for retail buyers
• Understanding buyers and shoppers is critical to tailoring your pitch
• Use data to demonstrate category growth and product-market fit
• Insights can support messaging, packaging and pricing decisions
• Tailoring your pitch to each retailer shows you understand their needs
• A strong insight-led pitch gives buyers confidence in your product

The value of consumer insight for influencing retail buyers

Retail buyers base their decisions on many factors: assortment gaps, consumer demand, product-market fit, and category performance. Above all, they want to reduce risk. Their reputation depends on stocking products that sell, so they’re naturally cautious about introducing new items.

Consumer insight helps brands do just that – reduce perceived risk and build trust. By gathering data about your target shoppers, you can demonstrate there’s a real need for your product. You can also show how your product fits in the current category landscape, how it fills a gap or responds to a trend, and how it aligns with buyer priorities.

Armed with this evidence, you’re better positioned to influence retail decisions. You show you’re not just making a pitch; you’re presenting a business case backed by data.

How to influence retail buyers step-by-step

To effectively influence retail buyers, brands should follow an eight-step framework rooted in consumer insight. The framework is designed to move in the same direction as a retail buyer’s own decision-making process – from initial understanding through to final pitch. It mirrors the logic a buyer uses to evaluate new listings, making it an intuitive and effective structure for brands to follow.

What makes this framework effective is that it addresses the emotional and rational drivers of buyer decisions. It reassures them with data, appeals to their goals, and aligns with how they think. And because it’s structured around insight, every step is backed by evidence, making your pitch more persuasive and your product more likely to get listed.

The 8 steps to influence retail buyers

1. Understand the retail buyer 

2. Understand the target shopper 

3. Show category growth 

4. Prove consumer demand 

5. Refine your messaging 

6. Create standout packaging 

7. Support pricing conversations with data 

8. Tailor your approach to each retailer

1. Understand the retail buyer

Retail buyers are your audience, and like any audience, they need to be understood. They operate under pressure to deliver results, hit revenue targets, and maintain a balanced assortment. Although retail buyers are notoriously time-poor and hard to reach, making direct research challenging, that doesn’t mean you can’t build accurate, useful personas. 

Trade press interviews, conference talks, and LinkedIn posts often reveal valuable clues about how buyers think. Look for quotes where they talk about what excites them, what trends they’re backing, or what they expect from brands.

Study the types of products a retailer lists, especially new additions. What trends are they leaning into? Are they backing value, sustainability, indulgence, or innovation? This tells you a lot about what their buyers are prioritising – and what gaps they’re looking to fill.

Don’t forget to leverage case studies to see how other challenger brands have successfully secured listings. What arguments did they lead with? What data did they bring? Many published case studies highlight buyer pain points and motivations indirectly.

Finally, review job descriptions for buyer roles in your target retailers. They’ll often list key responsibilities and performance metrics (e.g. growing category value, innovating within trend areas, increasing shopper loyalty). These give strong signals about what buyers are evaluated on, and therefore, what they care about. Tailoring your approach to their mindset helps you influence their decisions more effectively.

2. Understand the target shopper

To influence a buyer, you need to prove your product will appeal to their customers. That means profiling your target audience and gathering shopper insights. A product that appeals in Waitrose might need a very different positioning to succeed in Aldi. That’s why building retailer-specific customer personas is so valuable. 

Use a platform like Attest to survey a nationally representative audience and filter for respondents who regularly shop at a specific retailer. This allows you to compare and contrast shopper attitudes, preferences and habits across different retailers.

For example, you might find that Lidl shoppers are more price-driven and discovery-led, whereas Waitrose customers prioritise ethics, provenance and quality. These nuances can then shape your pitch, messaging, packaging and price point recommendations.

When conducting customer profiling analysis through Attest, you can filter results by retailer affinity alongside age, gender, region and more. This allows you to build layered personas e.g. 25–34-year-old health-conscious women who shop at Sainsbury’s and are highly engaged with sustainable brands.

Once you’ve gathered insight from multiple retailer audiences, map the key differences. Are Lidl shoppers more experimental? Are Sainsbury’s shoppers more responsive to new formats? These contrasts are gold when pitching to buyers – they show you understand their customer, not just your brand.

3. Show category growth

Retail buyers want to back products that align with or lead category trends. They need reassurance that your product isn’t just a flash in the pan.

Use secondary data sources (e.g. Mintel, Euromonitor, Kantar) to analyse long-term growth trends within your category. Highlight growth rates, emerging subcategories, and changes in consumer preferences (e.g. a shift towards low-sugar, high-protein, or plant-based). This builds a broader context for your product’s role.

If your category is more established or growing faster in other regions (e.g. the US or EU), use this data to forecast domestic potential. This is particularly useful for challenger categories still in early growth stages domestically.

Next, survey consumers to measure awareness, purchase frequency, and interest in products within your category. By repeating this over time or comparing across demographics, you can show that appetite for the category is growing, and where demand is concentrated.

Back up this data by using tools like Google Trends, Exploding Topics, or social listening platforms to demonstrate rising consumer interest in key ingredients, claims or product types associated with your category.

You can also reference the volume and performance of recent product launches in your category. If competitors are entering the space or major players are expanding their ranges, it signals momentum that your product can be part of.

Where possible, tailor your data to each retailer. If Sainsbury’s is outperforming the market in your category, highlight that and explain how your product can help them maintain or grow that lead.

4. Prove consumer demand

Proving consumer demand is one of the most critical parts of a retail pitch – especially for new or challenger brands. Use quantifiable data to back up your claims and reduce perceived risk for the buyer.

If your product is already in market (e.g. D2C or via independent retailers), share sales performance, repeat purchase rates, or customer feedback. Metrics like customer lifetime value, conversion rate or social proof (e.g. positive reviews, UGC) can reinforce that people not only want the product but also come back for more.

Compare performance to category benchmarks: if your product outperforms typical demand or engagement levels for your category (e.g. higher purchase intent than the average snack or beverage), call it out. This shows your product has breakout potential.

For new innovations, use tools like Attest to test demand with your target audience. Ask questions like:

• “How likely are you to buy this product?”
• “Which of these products would you choose?”
• “How much would you be willing to pay?”

High purchase intent or strong preference compared to alternatives is a powerful signal of demand – especially if you can demonstrate it among your target retailer’s customer base.

And if you’ve got as far as building a pre-launch list or early access group, use this as proof of pent-up demand. Even a modest waitlist (with verified signups) can help convince buyers there’s real consumer appetite.

5. Refine your messaging

To convince retail buyers your product messaging is right for their customers, you need to show it’s been rigorously tested, refined, and proven to resonate. Use message testing to test your key messages (e.g. “low in sugar,” “100% natural,” “boosts energy”) with the demographic that aligns with the retailer’s shoppers. Ask which messages they find most compelling, trustworthy, or motivating, and why.

Use A/B testing across packaging, ads or headlines to show how different wordings perform. For example, you might compare “Plant-powered energy” vs “Naturally energising” or “99% sugar-free” vs “No added sugar”.

You can add emotional weight and humanise your insight by including shopper quotes that reflect how your messaging landed. For example: “I’d buy this because it sounds like a healthier alternative to my usual brand.” 

Importantly, you should show how your message ladders up to category drivers. Retail buyers want to know your messaging supports their sales goals so link your claims to what’s driving category growth – whether that’s health, indulgence, convenience, or sustainability. Demonstrate how your product taps into those triggers with clear, tested language and prove that you understand how to drive conversion.

6. Create standout packaging

Packaging is what makes shoppers stop and look. On a crowded shelf, it’s your product’s first impression. Use research to test different designs and visual cues. Ask consumers which versions they prefer, which elements catch their eye, and what each design communicates.

In addition to packaging testing, shelf-set testing helps brands understand how their product performs in a realistic shelf environment – crucial for proving standout and shoppability to retail buyers. Use a tool like Canva’s Mockup Generator to create a realistic shelf mock-up – complete with competitors, pricing, packaging, and layout – and test how your product performs.

You can ask participants to:

• Spot or choose a product in a typical shopping scenario
• Rank shelf appeal or noticeability
• Compare multiple packaging or placement options
• Recall specific products or claims after viewing

Ask both closed questions (e.g. “Which product did you notice first?”) and open-ended ones (e.g. “What caught your eye?”). This gives you both measurable data and nuanced feedback on design, messaging and positioning.

Shelf-set testing reveals whether your product cuts through, how easily it’s found, and what drives attention. For extra clout, you can test retailer-specific layouts to mimic their in-store reality. You can then show buyers hard evidence, like “This packaging outperformed others in visibility by 2x” or “Shoppers were 40% more likely to pick this format vs the control”. It shows you’re thinking like a retailer; focused on sell-through, not just sell-in.

7. Support pricing conversations with data

Pricing is a sticking point for many retail buyers. Come prepared with pricing surveys that show the price shoppers are willing to pay and how your pricing compares within the category.

Pricing insight helps you defend your margin and show value alignment. For example, show that your product is seen as premium and justified at a higher price point, or that it offers better value than the leading competitor. Buyers want to see that your price makes sense for their customers and for their shelves.

Direct pricing research (like Gabor-Granger or Van Westendorp) is even more powerful when combined with shelf-set testing. First, use surveys to find willingness to pay, then use shelf testing to see how that plays out in a competitive setting. Shelf-set testing can be a surprisingly powerful way to evaluate pricing, because it puts your product in a realistic competitive context, rather than testing it in isolation. 

Seeing your price on a shelf alongside alternatives shows whether it feels justified, expensive, or like a bargain. Consumers don’t judge price in a vacuum, they compare. Shelf testing reveals if your RRP looks aligned with your positioning. For example: A £3 snack might feel premium and fair if surrounded by £2.50–£4 competitors, but overpriced if everything else is £1.50. It’s therefore important to demonstrate your understanding of the pricing environment your product will inhabit if you successfully win placement with your target retailer. 

8. Tailor your approach to each retailer

Every retailer is different. Their priorities, audience, and product gaps vary. Use insight to understand each one and tailor your pitch accordingly. What works for a premium grocery chain may not resonate with a discount retailer.

Adapt your language, pricing, packaging and messaging to each retailer’s brand values and customer base. Show buyers how your product fits their store strategy and will meet the needs of their customers. The more personal and data-led your pitch, the stronger the impact.

Tailoring your pitch to each retailer isn’t just about what you say, but also how you present it. A strong visual treatment can make your pitch more memorable, easier to digest, and more persuasive.

Present visuals of their customer, built from your research. Use photos, quotes from open text questions, and callouts that speak directly to their shopper base. A persona card for “Budget-conscious Brenda” or “Time-poor Toby” instantly grounds your pitch in relevance.

Avoid overwhelming buyers with raw data. Instead, turn insight into simple visuals: pie charts, heatmaps, stat callouts and annotated shelves work well. And consider creating an at-a-glance one-pager showing why this product fits their store right now – category gaps, shopper trends, or competitor performance. 

Real-world example: How Premier Foods uses Attest to win with retailers

Premier Foods – the company behind brands like Bisto, Sharwoods and Mr Kipling – uses Attest to strengthen its retailer relationships and elevate its pitches with data-led insights.

By surveying both the total market and individual retailers’ own shoppers, Premier Foods uncovers nuanced shopper behaviours and preferences that help them tailor pitches to specific accounts. For example, they gather insights on dietary habits, brand discovery paths and shopping missions that vary between, say, Tesco and Morrisons.

This insight helps them:

• Show a clear understanding of each retailer’s customer
• Identify assortment gaps and align products with category needs
• Position themselves as thought leaders, not just suppliers

Their Category & Shopper Strategy Manager, Emily Jones, describes Attest as an “absolute game-changer,” helping Premier Foods move from transactional to strategic conversations with buyers. They now produce bespoke insight reports that give them a distinct competitive advantage in retail pitches.

Using insights to create a persuasive retail pitch

The strongest pitches are built on data. Use consumer insight to:

• Visualise shopper personas and demand using charts and summaries
• Present evidence of category trends and how your product aligns
• Highlight validated messaging, pricing and packaging
• Demonstrate adaptability for specific retailer needs
• Add social proof like consumer quotes from qualitative research or NPS scores

Make your pitch easy to digest. Use visuals to communicate key insights, keep your messaging clear and benefit-led, and build a narrative that shows how your product solves a problem or meets a need. With the right insights, you can transform a standard pitch into a compelling story that resonates.

Turning insights into a strategic advantage

Consumer insight is your secret weapon for influencing retail buyers. By gathering the right data, you can prove demand, refine your messaging and pricing, and build a pitch that resonates with both buyers and their shoppers.

In a competitive market, insight can be the difference between a yes and a no. It shows that your brand is serious, prepared, and aligned with consumer needs. It builds credibility and reduces the friction in buyer conversations.

Attest helps brands gather fast, robust insights to support better buyer conversations. Whether you’re validating a concept, testing packaging, or profiling a new audience, we make it easy to gather the data that wins listings.