Point-of-sale experience: qualitative research with shoppers
A qualitative point-of-sale study shows how people experience a visit to a store, a showroom or a service desk: what makes them feel well or badly served, at what moment they walk out without buying and how staff and space shape what they decide, told by the people who lived it.
What does this study answer?
- What people expect before they walk in, and how much of it they find.
- When they feel well served and when they feel ignored, pressured or lost.
- Where the visit falls apart: on arrival, while looking, while waiting, when asking for information or at the checkout.
- What staff did that helped them decide, and what pushed them away.
- How the space weighs in: layout, signage, waiting times, being able to see and touch the product.
- How the experience of customers and non-customers differs, and what they remember about the competition.
Sales per store and satisfaction surveys tell you where something is wrong. The conversation explains what happened at that moment and why the person left or came back.
How do you study an experience that already happened?
The session does not take place in the store, so it works from two sources. The first is memory: each person walks through their last visit step by step, from deciding to go until they left, and marks the moment their mood changed. Recalled experiences are subjective, and that is exactly why they show what stuck and what people later tell others.
The second is stimuli: photos of the store, a floor plan, a video walkthrough or examples of display material. Looking at them helps sharpen vague memories, such as "there was nobody to ask", and lets you compare layout or service alternatives before rolling them out.
In long purchases, such as buying a car, the dealership visit is one more stage of the decision, and the service at handover or at the workshop weighs on the next purchase. There it pays to walk through several visits, not just the last one.
Customers and non-customers in the same group?
No. People who bought tend to defend their experience, and people who walked out defend their decision. Apart, customers say what made them come back and non-customers explain what made them leave, which is usually what the store knows least. Who counts as a customer is set by what each person states in the recruitment screener. More in customers and non-customers.
What does it not answer?
It does not count how many people walk into the store, how many buy or what conversion rate each stage has. Footfall counters, sales data or a mystery shopping audit measure that. Nor does it tell you what share of customers runs into each problem: it shows which ones appear, how people explain them and whether they repeat across groups. To size them, a later survey can measure what the study found.
How does WAV design it?
We start from the decision, not from a questionnaire. In the first conversation we agree on what has to be settled when the study ends, and from there we build the groups, the guide and the stimuli.
- Groups by profile. Recent customers, people who visited and did not buy, and competitors' customers, each profile in its own group.
- 6 to 8 people per group, sessions of 90 to 120 minutes. Enough for contrast, and enough time for everyone to speak.
- Stimuli in the room. Photos, floor plans and walkthroughs of your own store and, when useful, the competition's, to anchor memories in what people actually saw.
- In writing first. With the nominal group technique, each person notes the best and the worst moment of their visit before hearing the others.
- A 360 room in Santiago. A 360 camera records the whole room and each participant wears their own microphone. The brand can follow the session live.
The session follows a guide in blocks, each with its goal and minutes; there is an example in the focus group discussion guide template.
What do you receive?
A report that orders the findings by moment of the visit, from arrival to exit, and says which ones repeat across groups and which appeared only once. Every finding comes with its literal quote, the profile of the person who said it (for example "Woman, 45-54 · Visited, did not buy") and the exact minute of the session. WR3, our software, separates who is speaking with 90.4% agreement with a human review, measured on 141 moments of a real session (how we measure it), and every quote is checked word for word against the transcript, which is produced on our own computers.
The deliverables come in Spanish and English: the 360 video of each session with English subtitles, the report on the web and as a PDF, a deck for the board and an action tracker with the evidence behind each action. You can browse the format in the sample report, built from a fictional study.
Frequently asked questions
Why not hold the session in the store?
Because there people talk with staff nearby and the brand present, and that changes what they say. In a neutral room they describe their experience more freely, and the stimuli bring the store into the conversation.
Can it compare a new store layout with the current one?
It can show how each one reads and what people expect to find in each area, from floor plans, photos or walkthroughs. It does not replace a trial in a real store, which shows how people actually move.
How do you find people who visited and did not buy?
We recruit them ourselves, with a recruitment screener that asks which stores they visited, when, and where they ended up buying. Only people who lived that visit join the group.
How recent does the visit need to be?
Ideally recent, so the memory still has detail. The exact window is set in the recruitment screener, depending on how often the category is bought.
Can I watch the session?
Yes. The brand can follow the session live, and also receives the 360 video of each session to return to any minute later.