In the religion that is shopper marketing, one of the central beliefs is the path to purchase.

For many marketers, the five or six step path to purchase (P2P) is writ in stone like the 10 Commandments.

But is it time for non-believers to smash the P2P and come up with a new model?

For those new to shopper (shopper marketing), what is the P2P in the first instance?

It’s simply a framework for thinking about the shopper’s journey from the moment they become aware of
a product or service, to the point at which they open their wallet. And it’s nothing new.

In fact, the P2P is derived from a concept called the ‘purchase funnel’, which was invented in 1898 by an
American adman by the name of E. St. Elmo Lewis.

His theory of a staged purchase process was further developed later into the AIDA model (every
salesperson knows this one): Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action.

Imagine that. A 19th century construct for a 21st century shopper.

If nothing else, that nice, neat linear model has been made gloriously messy by the advent of digital, and smartphones in particular.

That’s why I’ve reframed today’s version of the P2P as the ‘pinball path to purchase’ (and I’ve been greatly influenced in my thinking by Westfield’s director of marketing, John
Batistich).

The idea is that instead of shoppers moving in a straight line from sofa to sale, they bounce around all over the place. At any point they could be influenced to purchase.

It doesn’t mean that the shopper’s behaviour is scattergun, but it can follow a much less predictable path than in times past.

For instance, a shopper may go to the mall, be inspired to buy in a physical store, but delay the purchase until they indulge in a bit of couch commerce via a tablet at home that evening.

Or they may never visit a store in the first place, preferring to shop online.

Or they could whip out their smartphone in a shop, compare prices, and purchase on Amazon.

As Peter Huskins of Shopability notes, “it is the multitude of different pre-purchase touch points that are now available, and are being continually reinvented, that drives much of the pinball bouncing.”

The Pinball P2P is likely to loop back on itself too, by taking into account repurchase and loyalty.

While the Pinball P2P is more complex than a direct path to purchase, I find that it’s still useful to map out a customer’s course of action as best you can.

Preferably with the benefit of research and data (or at the very least observation research), you need to figure out the shopper’s likely state of mind and behaviour at each point along the way, leverage those insights, and plan appropriate messaging and triggers to suit.

If you Google ‘death of path to purchase’ you get almost half a billion results.

For my money though, I don’t think St. Elmo Lewis’ model is dead, but I do think it needs to be reimagined for the age in which we live.

Jon Bird is chairman of specialist retail marketing agency IdeaWorks and Octomedia, publisher of Inside Retail. Email: jon.bird@ideaworks.com.au, Blog: www.newretailblog.com, Twitter: @thetweetailer