Retail CIO Outlook Weekly Brief
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In this evolving digital era, retailers should adopt new approaches to empower their customers, thereby promote their products.
FREMONT, CA: In this digital era, consumers are embracing the advent of new technologies and are learning to leverage its power. Today, consumers do not prefer to leave their comfort zone and wish to accomplish their needs without moving an inch from their desk. These consumers expect an experience to be availed by stores during face-to-face interaction without actually entering the stores and making a purchase. Understanding modern-day consumers and providing the right platform that can fulfill their needs is the primary concern of most retailers in this digital world. The retailers should think beyond the demands from their prospective consumers that can meet their necessities at least to the borderline. In this regard, e-commerce can help retailers to go smart in retaining their customers.
The retailers should readily adopt new strategies to sustain themselves in this era of ever-changing consumer buying behavior. Now, almost all retailers have enrolled their business in an online platform, thus promoting their products on various platforms. However, the retailers cannot stop with this and should discover new approaches to stay at the forefront ahead of their competitors. Segmentation of customers based on their location, behavior, context, and interest can help them better understand the customers while accurately addressing their needs.
The smart retail data analytics capture critical data metrics that can be accessed by the employees of the organization. In-store retail analytics helps identify the interest of potential customers within the organization. It acquires merely the processes of discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data and applies them to retail store operations. In doing so, retailers can get more insight into the performance of their business on both micro and macro scales.
Here are a few new approaches that CIOs can adopt to engage the retail consumers continuously.
Experiential activation
Experiential activation is a new form of marketing, including event, participation, live, experiential, brand activation, and brand experience marketing focused on creating long-lasting and meaningful connections with customers. According to a recent study, 58 percent of industry experts have adopted experiential marketing to captivate their customers. Earlier this year, Sephora, Paris-based French multinational chain of personal care and beauty stores, has installed an intelligent digital mirror built with artificial intelligence (AI) technology, in its flagship store in Madrid on Calle Serrano. The mirror utilizing a smart engine acquires insights about the person in front of it, in terms of gender, age, look, and style. This helps deliver hyper-personalized experiences to shoppers. It, then, recommends products like moisturizers, lipsticks, and fragrances to power their look. The mirror display provided with QR codes allows customers to purchase the products on the company’s website and also enables them to locate the product quickly in the retail store. This specific type of marketing is gaining attraction among the customers.
Virtual zones
Virtual zones, another form of smart retail, targets the customers at the street level. It creates V-Zone, which is otherwise called geofence, that derives the power of GPS covering an area ranging between a few meters to a few hundred meters. It tracks the customers whenever they pass the V-Zone. It then notifies the customers giving information about the nearby shops of their interest. Also, the system can support as many beacons and sensors with the ability to deactivate or reactivate when needed.
Smart analysis
Through smart analysis, retailers can gain insights into campaigns. The heat maps generated help calculate the number of times customers visit a particular area while the footfall figures help determine the count of customer visits. This analysis helps retailers to further incorporate some add-ons that can profoundly influence the frequency of customer visits.
Customized media campaigns
A customized media campaign is another way to connect with the audiences and encouraging them to buy a product. Here, interactive media content is delivered directly to the user devices. It works in a way where a first time visitor will get an irrelevant message, as compared to the one who has visited the store a few times. Once the new visitors’ preferences are identified, then relevant messages stimulating their curiosity to buy will be sent. Another example will be if a customer spends a predefined amount of time near a particular section, then he/she will be notified via messages about the existing discount on items in that section. This feature can help identify the target customers, thereby retaining the customers.
Indoor navigation
By using 3D maps for navigation and routing, indoor navigation helps shoppers find the accurate location of the desired product and places they would like to visit inside the store while the customers can locate their position as well.
Facial recognition and machine learning
Facial recognition and machine learning capabilities built into a kiosk eliminate the need for additional sales staff, enabling the shoppers themselves to interact and know the prevailing discounts. The kiosk has a camera and digital display. When a shopper operates the kiosk, it identifies the gender and age, and displays the offers available on the screen. This smart retail technique enables the delivery of relevant offers to the right customers.
Also, with pre-configured tags programmed in the smart retail platform, customers can look for the most appropriate tags that can suit them.
Conversational platform
Modern-day consumers have enormous opportunities to share their experiences and valuable information, providing reviews as well as ask for recommendations and leave comments. The platform enables real-time conversation with the customers. These personalized conversations help in responding to the customers directly on the smartphone. Also, the customers can give their suggestions while clearing their doubts with the retailers.
The retailers are facing complex challenges, indeed with the switching customers’ buying habits. So, it becomes crucial for them to understand their customers thoroughly and cater to their needs. Research is the only approach to gain insights into the consumers’ behavior, whereas digital platforms are unique solutions that can cater to their needs.
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