July 31st, 2023, Janice Fernandes
In the highly competitive retail industry, it is crucial for brands to make an impression on consumers and then guide them through the key stages of the marketing funnel to convert them into customers.
Using data from YouGov BrandIndex — which monitors key measures of brand health daily — we look at the performance of three prominent high street retailers in the UK over the course of three months to examine that consumer journey.
Marks & Spencer
As you’d expect from a high street institution, the Marks & Spencer brand is very well-known, with 96% of UK consumers aware of the retailer.
Nearly three-fifths of all UK consumers (58%) say they would consider purchasing from Marks & Spencer the next time they are in the market for clothing, beauty, home and food products which the retailer sells. This means that 61% of consumers who are aware of Marks & Spencer would consider buying their products the next time.
Where Marks & Spencer stands out most from the other brands we look at in this piece — Boots and John Lewis — is on the last stage of the purchase funnel journey: Purchase Intent. Marks & Spencer’s conversion rate from Consideration to Purchase Intent (47%) is nearly double that of John Lewis’ and 12 percentage points more than Boots.
Boots
Like Marks & Spencer, Boots demonstrates a high Awareness score, with 94.8% of UK consumers familiar with the brand.
When it comes to the Consideration stage, 54.6% of UK consumers say they would consider buying from Boots the next time they are looking to shop. With a conversion rate of 57% from the Awareness stage, Boots effectively converts three-fifths of its aware consumers into potential customers.
Examining the Purchase Intent stage, Boots displays an 18.9% score, indicating the likelihood of a consumer choosing to buy from the brand. This shows that Boots converts just over a third (35%) of those considering the brand to the point of intending purchase.
John Lewis
Our final high street grandee, John Lewis, has a high level of brand recognition in the UK, with 94% of consumers saying they are aware of the brand.
John Lewis’ Consideration score of 37.3% signifies a conversion rate of 39% from the Awareness stage - the lowest of our three selected brands. That’s perhaps a function of the brand having fewer high street stores than the other two of our retailers.
But the brand’s levels continue to drop in the final stage of the purchase funnel. The brand’s Purchase Intent score of 10.1% reveals a conversion rate of 27% from the Consideration stage to the Purchase Intent stage, making it the least efficient of our brands at turning Consideration into Intent.
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