On Monday, November 3, Shelley E. Kohan, vice president of retail consulting at RetailNext, facilitated a case study presentation at the annual Money 20/20 show, a massive event in Las Vegas with over 7,500 attendees. With historical roots in payments and financial services based on disruptive innovations, this year’s show also featured a retail track, and no one knows innovative disruption in retail like Shelley and RetailNext.
Retail analytics are empowering retailers to make better decisions in shopping experience and customer service, leading, in turn, to increased store performance. It’s an organizational and cultural shift with its roots in a new power paradigm – for the first time, the shopper is clearly in charge.
Marketing effectiveness
Retailers spend enormous sums of money, time and thought in generating traffic into the store. Shelley’s first case study illustrated how simple retail analytics around capture rate, traffic and visit duration can help evaluate marketing activities and determine more comprehensive metrics on ROI. No more guess work or intuition.
Customer experience
Even in small format stores, understanding how traffic flows through the entire store influences everything from store layout and design to merchandising. Shelley’s second case demonstrated how understanding traffic flow from zone to zone, dwell counts and dwell time allows a retailer to identify specific opportunities, leading to the deployment of different solutions to different zones.
Branding
Shelley’s final case study dealt with a men’s brand trying to better understand the differences in shopping behavior between its classic and contemporary lines. Retail analytics found the contemporary line was high traffic destination, while the classic line had much longer shopper dwells. By “flipping” the merchandise, both lines achieved better results – on flat conversation rates, classic rose 11%, while contemporary soared 32%, and the average transaction value increased $7-12.
The Holiday shopping season is upon us, and the shopper revolution is in full swing. Retail professionals like Shelley are using retail analytics more and more to make meaningful connections with customers and differentiate themselves as “retailers of choice.” The benefits include not only the retention of loyal shoppers, but boosts to both the top and bottom lines.
Have questions on #retail or #retailanalytics? Connect with Shelley on Twitter @retailshelley and @RetailNext or at www.facebook.com/retailnext.