Successful Retail Store Analytics

Retailers have much more sophisticated tools for in-store analytics of customer behavior, but a study conducted by Forrester Research, Inc. revealed pitfalls and recommended key actions for retailers to take to achieve success with in-store analytics.

Legacy store analytics only has allowed for slow reaction and limited breadth of activity measurement in traffic counting, merchandise productivity, labor management, loss prevention and shopper studies. Increasing use of analysis of smart mobile devices, wi-fi and surveillance technology creates an opportunity to address layout optimization, merchandise productivity and labor management coupled with customer behavior, proactive loss prevention, marketing attribution and store marketing performance.

For retailers to successfully utilize this technology, they should take some specific measures. First, address privacy concerns of the customers and be transparent. Nordstrom attempted to deploy in-store analysis in 2013 and it resulted in enough customer complaints to cause the company to cease implementation. Next, rather than simply measuring store traffic, measure the conversion rates of customers who enter the store – for example, improve practices of window display effectiveness and how it relates to store traffic.

Most important is to involve many teams, from store operations, merchandising, asset protection, and marketing, to use the analytics in cooperation. Retailers must merge store analytics with traditional retail data — including staffing, inventory, customer lifetime value, online customer behavior, weather, environmental conditions and existing historical behavioral data — into an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to transform physical store operations. Retailers need to empower and train associates, local store managers, and regional managers to act locally with insights and provide staff with real-time guidance.

Source: Retailwire.com