3 priorities for retail success in 2023
Retailers can continue their golden run in the year ahead by focusing on a small handful of key priorities.
Firstly, retailers can enhance their use of big data and analytics to guide the development of new services and innovation. Many retailers have a wealth of customer purchase data that can be mined for insight into personalised products, offers and experiences.
Whether purchasing online or in-store, customers seek personalised shopping experiences tailored to their needs and preferences. This can take the form of personalised marketing offers, discounts or rewards, and ensuring product suggestions and sales items are relevant to each customer.
Clothing retailers can take it a step further by tracking customer purchases to understand what styles and types of clothing a customer prefers, and offer similar products or even offer to tailor-make clothing items based on the customer’s preferences, body type, and more.
Secondly, retailers could develop tailored subscription services for certain types of customers.
For example, a pharmacy retailer could use loyalty data to better understand which customers are purchasing baby products. Because of the repeatable nature of purchases such as nappies and baby formula, a smart retailer could introduce a subscription service to qualifying customers that ensures a regular delivery of key baby items.
This would ensure repeat business for the retailer while giving new parents a positive customer experience by removing the need to constantly go to the shop to stock up on essentials.
Finally, retailers should enhance their human capital management capabilities. With customer expectations for great personalised service at an all-time high, retailers that want to win the hearts and minds of customers need to ensure in-store staff can deliver a consistently great customer experience.
It’s no longer enough that in-store staff simply stock shelves and process purchases. Smart retailers will invest in attracting and retaining top talent to ensure in-store staff can provide helpful information, guidance and support to customers during their purchases.
Retailers may choose to partner with technology providers that have the experience and global insight to guide how technology is deployed to assist with the above three priorities. For retailers that get it right, there is practically no limit to their success over the coming years. |