More Companies Focus On Customer Insights
By Phillip Britt, contributing writer
A new study from Kantar Retail reports that retailers and manufacturers have moved an increasing number of employees to the “shopper insights” function.
“This increased internal dedication to and connectivity across insights and management for retailers has led to a greater breadth of retailer insights and game-changing expectations for manufacturers,” the report says. “Now manufacturers are expected to bring knowledge and insights to retail headquarters, where the insights are managed on an ongoing basis.”
Increasingly, the shopper insights specialists are reporting to centers of excellence (COEs) within the organization, with the percentage doubling from 6 percent to 12 percent over the last three years, according to the report. The percentage reporting to an insights-specific group has risen as well, from 25 percent to 41 percent.
Yet shopper insights remain lacking for several companies, due to the frenetic pace of technological change, as Retail Solutions Online reported earlier this year. David Andrews, director of marketing communications at Reflexis recommended using a comprehensive store execution management system (SEM) and analytics to drive better performance.
Indeed, the Kantar report said that category leadership is largely linked to the ability to drive a better shopping experience, tied to actionable insights and the ability to share new data-driven information, ideas and processes, according to the report.
In another Retail Solutions Online article, Kellie Peterson, director of marketing for iInside, pointed out that the analytics can indicate how customers progress through a store, whether they buy or are just showrooming, the effectiveness of displays and other critical customer behavior information.
Location analytics, geo-fencing and related technologies can provide valuable insight on customer behavior that companies can use in human resources, operations and elsewhere throughout the organization.
But retailers need not just information on their own shoppers, but also on all shoppers across different demographic targets, so manufacturers should look to best practices among retailers, channels and macro trends, the Kantar report adds, stressing that category leadership needs to continue to evolve.
A T1Visions whitepaper discusses that retailers are focusing increasingly on the connected customer to shape their omni-channel retail strategies. Customers are not just showrooming, as mentioned earlier, but some of them are now reverse showrooming, using beacons for personalized offers and pursuing other evolutionary strategies to drive sales.