Information truly is power: Consumers' around-the-clock access to abundant product information has revolutionized the retail sector. Pervasive digital and mobile technology, shoppers makes more informed than ever, using online content and data to discover, research, compare and buy products from anywhere at any time.
For retailers and brands, information is also a game-changer. Retail data analytics can help companies stay ahead of shopper trends by applying customer analytics in retail to uncover, interpret and act on meaningful data insights, including in-store and online shopper patterns.
Why Retail Analytics are a Business Necessity
In the ultra-competitive retail sector, traditional sources of decision-making - such as sales history, and executives' experience and intuition - are now insufficient. Today's successful retail leaders rely on up-to-date data, metrics and solid facts to support their business decisions, including:
Customer experience decisions: To make effective, customer-centric decisions, retailers and brands use retail analytics to anticipate shopper needs and provide seamless customer experience. Customer analytics in retail can also help you improve customer experience and loyalty by knowing precisely which buyers are buying which products - and personalizing your marketing based on shopper data. According to Accenture, delivering a good shopping experience improves customer satisfaction, repeat purchases, customer loyalty, customer referrals, revenues and customer engagement.
Strategic decisions: Retail companies' functions often operate in silos - which means their data insights are fragmented, captured in pockets across the organization. To gain a comprehensive view of business results, including consumer trends and growth strategies, your company needs to unify and integrate all its data. Consolidating your data can help you make better business decisions faster by using a single, trusted source of information about your products and customers. In addition, using a retail dashboard gives you a high-level snapshot overview of your most important competitive performance metrics, including pricing, promotion and catalog movements.
Operational decisions: To improve operational performance across all channels, retail data analytics can help retailers and suppliers monitor store-level demand in real time to ensure bestselling items remain in stock. Gaining visibility into promotional performance can help you adapt your marketing, forecasting and replenishment tactics, and identify seasonal trends, popular items and opportunities to cross-sell to maximize revenue.
How Retailers Harness the Power of Retail Data Analytics
Big data effectively analyzes large volumes of diverse data and helps companies gain a deeper understanding of customer demand. Applying retail data analytics through retail software solutions makes shopping more relevant, personalized and convenient, which can help you sell more and boost consumer loyalty, as these examples of big data trends in retail prove:
Kroger: This U.S. grocery retailer has earned billions from its personalized coupon program. Kroger uses retail analytics solutions to determine which products an individual customer actually wants to buy, then sends them customized digital coupons for several of those products.
Amazon: The e-commerce giant attracts massive online consumer traffic, which gives Amazon big data retail analytics and rich insights into the products shoppers search for and actually buy. In Q1 2016, Amazon earned $29 billion, due in large part to using big data analytics for retail decisions and knowing exactly what customers want.
Internet Retailer: This e-commerce intelligence resource reports more retailers will soon rely on advanced technology, such as artificial intelligence and machine-learning techniques, as these data sources "grow smarter with time and act on the fly to realize the highest return." In the meantime, several e-commerce retailers have already dramatically increased their web sales after implementing retail analytics software to uncover actionable consumer insights from their online retail analytics.
Data insights from retail analytics software can help you spot emerging trends before your competitors do. Big data and online retail analytics can also give you certainty and confidence as you plan new ways to delight your customers.
Sanjeev Sularia, CEO and Co-founder, Intelligence Node
How Retail Software Solutions Support Data-Driven Decisions
Smart business decision-making requires that you know your numbers. To quickly grasp how your company is performing, a retail dashboard helps with strategic oversight and decisions. Data analytics can help you optimize your pricing by monitoring competitive pricing and discount strategies. To ensure you have the right product mix, usedata analyticse to monitor the bradth and depth of competitors' catalogs, and identify their newly-launched products. Which products are hot among your rivals' assortments? Monitor the fast-selling products of competitor brands to optimize your product site positioning. What differentiates your brand? Compare items you have in common with your competitors and the unique products you offer.
A leader among retail analytics companies, Intelligence Node is a user-friendly retail analytics software platform. Stay ahead of your rivals by closely following your competition and market trends with our proprietary retail analytics software, Incompetitor™. Get quick and timely insights into your competitions' pricing, promotion and catalog movement to plan ahead with precision and confidence.