Personalising the Shopper Experience- A race for survival
There is a fundamental shift happening in the retail ecosystem which has now become a hypercompetitive battleground where both brands and retailers are in a race vying for attention and striving to provide more personalised and differentiated experience to their customers.
83 percent of customers say they want their shopping experience to be personalized in some way, and effective personalization can increase store revenues by 20 to 30 percent. In addition, the ongoing pandemic has further complicated the purchase journeys as shoppers experiment with new store formats & categories, get used to digital platforms andvarious fulfilment options. Many have tried these for the first time but most intend to continue with them, according to a recent study by consultancy firm, McKinsey.
As these shopper purchase journey’s evolve further, one thing is for sure- customers now have a higher expectations of their retailers as they look for relevant products and experiences in line with their individual preferences and needs. This requires the retailers to up their game and have the ability to proactively engage with their shoppers, anticipating and predicting their needs thereby creating a more personalised experience..
Unlock data to drive personalisation
Becoming data driven is the key to understanding consumer behaviour and preferences which is the foundation for personalisation. Modernising your data warehouse, leveraging a big data platform like BigQuery, having the capability to process & analyse streams of data in real time are now essential building blocks for your data foundation. Making this data accessible with business intelligence platforms like Looker makes it easy to consume information which then ensures that the power of insights is not just limited to a few data scientists but is available for wider adoption. Retailers can then use pre-built data models or custom build their analytics use cases to solve specific retail needs around insights.
By bringing multiple datasets across an organization together, retailers can improve shopper experiences and customer lifetime value by optimizing in-store/on-site operations. Large retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond are working on establishing a single view of customer data across their portfolio with a view to drive personalisation, enhance fulfilment capacity and optimise merchandise planning and demand forecasting.
Another great example would be Hanes, Australia who is using Recommendations AI, a Google Cloud offering to provide personalised recommendations based on customer behaviour and changes to product ranges, pricing and offers. The business collects on-site as well as in-store transaction data along with the customer event data which is then streamed in near real time into their data platform for targeting, optimisation and personalised recommendations.
Unlocking your data to drive personalisation can dramatically improve customer engagement and experience, enhance transaction conversation rates and drive revenue.
What is your innovation agenda?
It is important to define your innovation agenda which inturn depends on the digital maturity and business priorities. Irrespective of the need, the logic demands a careful consideration and prioritisation of the solution areas based on business impact, strategic importance and of course execution complexity. More often than not, getting real time visibility of data across your retail value chain is the first step before you can begin to optimise the information in order to personalise the experience.
Building a strong data foundation across multiple silos of information- a common retail data model is always the first step in this direction. At the same time, having the technology is not enough. It is critical for retail leaders to encourage their teams to leverage their data & analytical capabilities to establish an Innovation Platform- a System of Insight which you can then use to drive data driven decision making within the retail ecosystem.
What’s clear, though, is that data will be the new driver of improved customer experiences. Retailers that make it easy, personalised and enjoyable for customers will win in the new normal. This capability however is still nascent as retailers adopt and build strong data foundations to create more personalised experiences - a huge area of focus as they work to recreate what “shopping” looks like now and in the future.