My week kicked off with a quick dash around my local Morrisons store (mum insight – mums jam in food shopping when they can, so for me it’s just after I’ve done the school run). This store is having a bit of an upgrade at the moment and as I walked around, I noticed they had installed a Kiddicare ‘pod’. Morrisons bought Kiddicare last year to expand both their baby range and their internet retail offering. The great thing about this pod is that it allows you to price check and buy products when you do your weekly shop but you don’t have to drag them home with you. Last year we worked with Morrisons taking mums on accompanied shops to see whether they liked the in store experience when they were buying baby products. It’s great to see the improvements Morrisons are making for mums.

This particular store is across the road from Mothercare so mums can pop into one store and then dash across the road to do a quick cost comparison. Price checking using my phone is something I do more and more. Recently a netmums survey revealed mums are more likely to use mobile phones than the average Brit. That’s no surprise to me; my phone is where I keep all my appointments, important dates such as school events and lists of things I need to buy. I’ve found myself using technology in new ways. At Christmas, I started using the bar code scanner that is part of Amazon’s iPhone app, it allows you to scan a code on a book (or other product) and it then shows you the price on Amazon. This means you can do a direct price comparison, make a buying decision then and there AND save money – all with a few clicks of your phone.

It’s often things that make a mum’s life easier that encourage us to buy. My girls are obsessed with fish fingers (this is no exaggeration). This week my other half purchased an enormous box to satisfy their cravings and it had a great new feature. You can now reclose the box by ripping off the top part and sliding it over the open end. One of the pain points of fish fingers is that you often spend a fair few minutes scrabbling around the bottom of the freezer to retrieve the ones that always escape the box. Birds Eye have solved this problem in a simple and elegant way and guess which brand of fish fingers I’ll be buying next time?

By Nicola