With the enormous amount of information that consumers receive daily, customers are getting more participative and less loyal to a single brand, valuing the best experience. This context has brought headaches for retailers on how to stand out from this competitive market. Understanding what your audience needs, even before they know they need your product, is a strategy that seems impossible.
In an attempt to meet these needs, Big Data plays an important role in building accurate sales strategies in the retail industry. Through the collection of data from different sources and the strategic analysis of this amount, it is possible to create more assertive and personalized sales plans. With big data in hand, retailers now can share them with their team, suppliers, and partners to accelerate their business. Moreover, the companies are now able to analyze and improve their relationship with brands and with the public as well.
Still, if you are confused and are not aware of how big data is benefitting the retail industry? Then, check these use cases; we have listed down to get a clear idea of how retail companies can implement big data to increase profitability.
Impact of using big data in the retail industry
- Attracts new customers with precision
Which store would not like to attract new customers?
Big data and the strategies that can emerge from its analysis will contribute a lot to this objective. But in order to attract the right customers, precision is needed to recognize the behavior of your target audience.
A good example of how to do this through data analysis is to use an information mining tool on social networks, to measure the reaction that your audience had in the first contact with any marketing action. Big Data Analytics transforms raw data into indicative of what your audience really needs, providing greater personalization, loyalty potential and an increase in the customer base.
Through Big Data solutions it is possible to cross-check data from other sources such as customer records, interactions with the public, message histories, routes taken by users within virtual stores and many others. From that, this information is processed in comparisons and mapping patterns, resulting in highly qualified metrics for managers. If you have difficulties in offering new products, Big Data information can keep managers up to date on the public’s behavior patterns, making it easier to understand how it can be impacted, what it expects from brands and what type of communication is more open, optimizing investment in marketing actions and choosing new items.
- Single access point
Each division of a store can have different types of data, for example, there is the department of purchasing, marketing, sales, human resources, among others. And each department may be collecting different data. In the same way, each of these departments needs to access the data, the best thing is that there is unique access, in which it is possible that the data of each of the departments is crossed. This is how strategies can be drawn between all parties. The idea is that everyone’s work fits, that resources are not wasted and that the impact of promotions and coupons actions, among others, on general sales can be known exactly.
- Anticipate Trends
Using advanced methods to extract value from data, such as predictive analysis, it is possible to anticipate purchasing trends and stand out from the competition. Not only regarding the volume to be stored and the time, but also about changes in the habits and preferences of the target audience. And trends are interesting to be anticipated in both physical and digital retail. This way, your store can not only offer new products before competitors but also items that really supply the attributes sought by the public.
Just remember that it is not enough to just extract data to restructure strategies, but to extract value from them. For this, it is necessary that specialists indicate the best Big Data Analytics solution for the needs of your business.
- Marketing Strategies and Customer Loyalty
The data collected by the tools that use Big Data are crucial to evaluate the interaction of consumers with the company. The technology is able to collect personal data from customers, such as name, age, and gender, and make a connection with the purchase profile, preferences, and frequency of visits.
For example: if a woman is pregnant, the tool makes this identification by the pattern of purchase in the store (clothes, props, diapers) and the comparison with her age. Thus, the marketing team is able to develop strategies to make her return more often to take advantage of specific promotions, sending offers to e-mail and social media. This is one of the strategies that can be applied to obtain customer loyalty.
Big Data also allows you to integrate customer information with your social media to identify his behavior and feelings towards the brand. This applicability generates valuable insights for the marketing team to develop specific campaigns to attract and retain consumers with the establishment’s profile.
- Changes to the store layout
Sensor and barcode data can be used to track visitor traffic in the store and shopping habits each month. In this way, the store is able to create more attractive promotions for periods of lower sales volume, in addition to optimizing its spaces to draw consumer attention.
A supermarket, for example, uses this information to make more expressive offers during periods when the customer does not have much money available. It also displays larger signs to identify differentiated prices and encourage impulse buying. Bigdata tools also help to verify which products are not having a good sales rate and which can be removed from the shelves.
For Example, Macy’s, a major fashion retailer in the United States, uses the technology to check product turnover at its units. This analysis reduces the time used in logistics operations and prevents many goods from being stopped in stock, as the information helps the team in promoting sales.
- Increase in sales
A hotel can increase or decrease its number of reservations according to weather, traffic conditions and other factors that influence tourism. The Red Roof Inn, a hotel in the United States, was able to use Big Data data to its advantage. The hotel chain tracks flight cancellations and the severity of the weather and identifies a potential customer who needs a place to sleep between an air bridge and another. In this way, it runs ads on mobile platforms to attract travelers and make it easier to book a hotel near you.
With these examples of Big Data, it is possible to notice that the technology has many applications for companies, especially in Retail. Knowing how to leverage this data intelligently is the best way to gain insights to increase business profitability.
Conclusion
All of these advantages of implementing Big Data solutions in retail occur because, from the value extracted from the data collected in each business, it is possible to reduce the wrong strategies and the losses that result from them, in addition to the source of information on which they are based be solid and reliable. It is an investment worth considering to make your company’s growth healthy and increase performance in an industry as competitive as retail.Â
