National Office Products Retailer

A major national office supply retailer moving into the commercial high-end furniture market wasn’t getting the ecommerce conversions it expected. The internal assumption was a website problem. The actual problem was more fundamental — the organization was entering the customer conversation too late.

Stakeholder interviews aligned internal goals and defined what the customer journey actually needed to capture. Ethnographic research with commercial project managers revealed a journey that looked nothing like what the organization had mapped internally. Online focus groups and a large-scale survey quantified the priorities.

The decision about furniture vendors was being made significantly earlier in the project lifecycle than the retailer assumed — at a stage when the organization had no presence or awareness with the buyer. By the time project managers reached the point where the retailer was trying to engage them, the decision was already made.

The findings reordered the entire go-to-market approach — earlier engagement triggers, new awareness touchpoints, and a specific set of digital tools (3D room visualization, product comparison, automated reorder) that matched how project managers actually shopped rather than how the retailer assumed they did.