Like everything else in retail, the role of the Chief Information Officer has transformed over the years. What was once a focus on managing information technology and systems has evolved into an active cross-functional management and leadership role that touches all aspects of the retail organization. As technology continues to advance and the overall consumer experience becomes even more reliant on digital platforms, it has become imperative that the CIO role transitions to meet the demands of today’s unified commerce. The CIO Role The …
Technology
(Stop) Measuring Sales Per-Square-Foot in an Omnichannel World
Should you evaluate the performance and efficacy of a physical retail store the same way you evaluate an ecommerce store or a mobile game? The short answer is not exactly – but the gaps are not that big. By applying methodologies and disciplines from one platform to the other, we can better understand what makes our users and visitors return to our store, app, or platform, and gain a deeper understanding of successful customer engagement. Measuring What Matters KPIs such as ARPU/ARPPU, Retention Rates, Stickiness, and LTV are widely used …
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The More Customers Walk Your Store, the More Your Space Is Worth
Location, location, location. How many times have we heard this when measuring the intrinsic value for a property? In shopping malls, location is everything for any store focused on attracting the maximum number of shoppers. If a store is sited in a high-traffic area, chances are more shoppers will enter that store to browse its products. Leasing teams equipped with Spatial Intelligence technology can quantify the relative value of each location based on foot traffic and impressions in real-time, placing value on their leasing strategies …
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Updated Playbook for Retail Success
Whether it is to make quicker business decisions, improve the customer experience, deliver operational efficiencies or reduce return rates, once the right data is in place there are some very simple things that brands and retailers can do today to drive up to 6 percent growth in their profit within the next 12 months. That is a significant cash injection for any business. Data, Data Everywhere, but Sadly not the Right Data Apparel and fashion industry experts, pundits and the brands themselves have all been extolling just how …
Optimizing Online Beauty Sales in a Changing Business Environment
This report highlights reasons behind the success of beauty e-retailers and brands from April 2021 through April 2022, despite supply chain disruptions, shifting consumer demands, return to in-store shopping, and now rising inflation. …
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What’s in Your Vending Machine?
The jury is still out on the long-term value of NFTs as a digital ownership model, but SXSW 2022 was steeped in NFT hype. The conference hosted 20+ sessions anchored in serious consideration of the topic, while in another room NFTs of digital art objects were available (to download) for a price. A quick NFT refresher: "A non-fungible token is a blockchain-housed identifier (or piece of individual code) that represents the terms of a smart contract granted upon the exchange of a singular digital object. This object could be a virtual property …
Retail Playbooks to Win
Winning sports teams have great playbooks. In the age of AI, coaches and teams have access to immense amounts of data, from discovering key insights on plays to understanding every action on the court. This data allows them to evaluate and improve how their team plays the game, all towards reaching the goal of winning. Just as sports teams leverage these digital tools to stay one step ahead of their competition, retailers too can take advantage of these same types of tools to drive their business to succeed. For a store operations manager …
Is Free Shipping Dead?
Everyone knows shipping is costly. Return shipping can be even costlier. In an effort to give consumers what they want, when they want it (aka good consumer service), retailers are running up costs for labor and packaging by shipping one item at a time. This practice may be great optics for the consumer, but it is inefficient, and the excess packaging and energy required for delivery harm the environment and retailers’ bottom lines. This puts retailers between a rock-and-a-hard-place with no clear solution … yet. Consumer expectations and …