73criz

Analytics Based Omnichannel Experience

September 14, 2017 11:30 am No Comments September 14, 2017

Amazon.com – “The Everything Store” that started its journey by selling books in 1995 and has been responsible for many physical book retailers closing down ever since has finally decided to be one itself and has started its first physical bookstore (which it calls “Amazon books”) in 2015 and today there are 10 stores. According to some reports, they are planning to open hundreds of such stores.

But, wasn’t Amazon created to be an alternative to brick and mortar stores? Wasn’t Amazon the reason why E-Commerce has become what it is today? What’s Amazon doing with these stores?

The Omni Channel experience

Amazon is creating a shopping ecosystem that seamlessly spans the online and offline worlds. The two are also linked by Amazon’s $99 a year Prime loyalty program, which gives online customers, perks such as a video streaming service and shipping privileges and at Amazon’s bookstores, cheaper books.

According to Customers who have visited these stores, inside, it looks like a Web page that has come to life. “Highly Rated: 4.8 Stars and above,” reads one shelf. Another highlights books “Read Around The Bay Area,” while a third features “Books with More Than 10,000 Reviews on Amazon.com”. Such a display ensures a consistent experience for the customer on all channels.

Leveraging their biggest Asset- “Data“

Amazon.com captures humongous amounts of data and is one company which makes full use of it; this is no different for the stores, some ways in which Amazon leverages data in the stores are

The store uses data from customer purchases, as well as nearly endless reviews, to decide which books to put in stores.
The shelves display positive reviews and star-ratings from the Amazon.com website
A popular feature in each of the stores is the recommendation section. In that area, Amazon displays hit books with multiple similar titles that maybe aren’t as well known
Massive amounts of data do give Amazon book pickers a nice perch from which they make their decisions. Take, for example, a section of the store labeled “Page Turners.” Those are books that have been read in three days or fewer by Kindle readers.

Optimum use of available space

“Amazon books” stores are typically smaller than the regular bookstores like “Barnes and Noble” but they use this space effectively. According to Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky, the bookstores are meant to be much more than just a place to sell books. They’re also a great way to showcase Amazon’s hardware devices and drive up their sales. “We think bookstores, for instance, are a great way for customers to engage with our devices, to see them, touch and play with them, and become fans, so we see a lot of value in that”, he says.

Amazon uses shelf space to display the covers of books facing outwards instead of spines; according to Amazon, the decision was made to showcase the authors and their work, rather than efficient use of space. Each book is displayed cover out, with customer ratings and reviews printed underneath.

If you are looking for ideas to go omnichannel, Manthan can help you.

For some quick ideas, download this whitepaper that talks about 4 steps you can take to attain multi-channel nirvana:

If you are interested in a 15 min. discovery call with Manthan, do write to us online.enquiries@manthan.com

Whole Foods- Grocerant

September 14, 2017 11:29 am No Comments September 14, 2017

“It’s 4 PM: your customers are just beginning to think about what’s for dinner. 81% of American consumers are unsure about what’s for dinner,” says Grocerant researcher Steven Johnson. This is driving the evolution of the Grocerant Store experience, blurring the lines between restaurants and grocery shopping.

Why is this important from a grocer’s point of view? Research shows that there is a strong correlation between brand perception and how grocers like Whole Foods address the essential need for food by various products and services (therefore creating new experiences). Providing consistent experience around eating healthy, eating fresh, using organic ingredients etc. extends a brand’s connect with a consumer segment. By widening the definition of the need category you are serving, more opportunities to improve customer experience opens up.

But all of this really starts with deep insights from your data and an ability to transform them into customer experiences. You need an understanding of customer behavior that is much deeper than you probably have right now, to develop innovative customer-centric strategies. You can use analytics to understand how to shape and develop customer needs, attitudes and preferences to food, health, life situations, and influence behavior and motivation to shape new and rewarding experiences. And with micro-targeting and personalized engagement capabilities you can shape customer decisions at any stage in their journey.

NPD’s foodservice market research found that in-store dining and take-out prepared foods from grocers has grown 30% over the past eight years, accounting for $10 billion of consumer spending in 2015. Millennials are a growing segment of ultra-conscious grocerant shoppers, and having your finger on the pulse of this segment means you really need to unlock more insights on what drives their choices.

Fashion and apparel brands have now taken a bite out of this trend. Retailers like Tommy Bahama, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Brooks Brothers all have or are planning restaurants selling freshly prepared food in-store.

When you put customer experiences at the center of your strategy, be prepared to experiment, innovate and disrupt your operating model, and get the right customer analytics and engagement technologies to enable your strategies. Getting it right could create significant and lasting value for your brand.

If you are looking for ideas to improve your store experience, Manthan can help you. Manthan’s Retail Analytics solutions are built exclusively for retail and tailored to fit unique retail decision-making needs. With the experience of serving 100s of customers across 22 countries, across Fashion & Apparel, Food & Grocery, Specialty and Mass Merchandise, you are bound to get what you are looking for.

For a quick overview download this data sheet:

If you are interested in a 15 min. discovery call with Manthan, do write to us at online.enquiries@manthan.com

ULTA – Assisted Selling

September 14, 2017 11:29 am No Comments September 14, 2017

There are 2 defining axioms that define marketing to millennials and they are as follows:

Millennials are more likely to spend on experiences than products.
Millennials are value conscious.

ULTA, the multi-billion dollar value cosmetics retailer, has got both these axioms rights. And their loyalty program ULTIMATE REWARDS at the foundation on which the marketing strategy pivots.

In order to enrich the experience for the customers, ULTA has made a number of big investments – they have repositioned their stores which double as product experience centres. In-store salons allow the buyers to try makeup and gadgets before purchase. Buyers can also get samples, read product reviews and expert advice when they are in the store. For the at-home buyers, their Glam lab allows the customer to upload selfies and test products against their skin tones. Tying in-store and at-home buying behaviour with digital tools have been a master stroke for driving growth.

Their loyalty program also allows them to create unique buying experience for the customers. It is the driver behind hyper personalization. Rather than receiving standard blanket loyalty point offers, and discounts on products, the customer receives surprise rewards that are tailor-made for her. It has changed the customer experience and has allowed them to move away from margin killing flat-off discounts. The highly personalized experience combined with mid-range prices given them the edge in the fight for value seeking millennials. With more than 90% of sales coming from 20 million+ loyalty members they are clearly driving loyalty and earning repeat business.

Other retailers can learn a few tricks on how to compete in the new world of retail where experience is the key and digital needs to permeate in-store experience.

For a quick overview download this Data Sheet

If you are interested in a 15 min. discovery call with Manthan, do write to us at online.enquiries@manthan.com

Real Time Data Processing vs Batch Data Processing

September 12, 2017 11:49 am No Comments September 12, 2017

If your business is still on batch data processing you have a hole in your pocket. And its making you lose money, fast. The biggest disadvantage of batch processing is that it creates a time delay. This time delay happens between your transaction receiving and output. Let’s look at how transactions receiving work. All the data your business generates, be it CRM data, POS data, Inventory data, Sales etc. can be viewed as unique transactions that are collected in multiple systems. All this data is stored in different business units within your organization and they all use different interfaces to collect and enter their data. But the important thing to note is that it gets collected somewhere. Now the problem is, you need to enter it in a format that can be viewed by multiple departments.

Now, what your team decided to do, was to have all these transactions processed independently at a desired, designated time. This is called Batch data processing. It collects all the inventory data based on the current in and out stock, and uploads it at 12 a.m., when none of your other employees are eating into company bandwidth. Similarly, it collects all the CRM data, POS Data and sales data and uploads it at that ungodly hour. Fast forward to 8 a.m. the next morning. The store manager looks into his i-pad to get the inventory status for the day. He sees data that was uploaded 8 hours prior and cannot see the large shipment that came in at 4 a.m. Your VP of sales is looking to understand how many Doritos was sold yesterday. But your system failed to report that a customer walked in at 2 a.m. and wiped out all the munchies for a party. This is just one example, using a grocery chain as model clay. Do you see the hole in the pocket now?

Enter our protagonist: Real time data processing.

Real time data processing involves continuous input, process and output of data. It allows data to be processed in a short period of time (we are talking milli-seconds). Going back to our grocery chain example, if a packet of chips was bought at 2:00:00 a.m., your data is updated to reflect that transaction at 2:00:01 a.m. If there was a delivery of avocados at 4:00:00 a.m., your system has a log updated at 4:00:01 a.m. Can you imagine the power of this Real time data? Decisions can be made on the fly, without having to worry if you are looking at the most recent data.

So how does this really work anyway? To really understand this, we need to go back to batch processing. Remember I told you that all the data collected throughout the day, gets updated at 12 a.m.? When it comes to Real time processing, each and every transaction that happens can be considered as a 12 a.m. batch upload. In other words, your system goes back and calculates all the transactions that happened throughout the day/ week/ month and adds 1 transaction to that total. All this happens in milliseconds! Each transaction can have multiple records in it and each record can be of multiple sizes. This would mean you now need a powerful web server and tons of money spent in infrastructure management right? Not really. Real time processing is now completely server-less and can be continuously scaled depending on your transaction receiving.

If you are interested in reading about a company that benefited from Real time processing, have a look at this Case study.

Going OmniChannel with Click and Collect

August 28, 2017 6:06 am No Comments August 28, 2017

The Click and Collect market segment is now worth $3.7B year currently and worth almost $1.6B in the final quarter of the year alone. For a convenience store retailer this market represents a huge opportunity. Gone are the days when you categorized customers into ‘Store only’ or ‘Online Only’. Today’s customers want an Omnichannel experience and if your store is not onboard this new phenomenon, you are bound to be left behind.

‘Click and Collect’ you say?

For the uninitiated, Waitrose was the first supermarket in the UK to launch a series of automated, temperature-controlled lockers in third party locations. Orders are stored in ambient, chilled and frozen lockers and can be refilled several times a day. Customers can place orders through waitrose.com/lockers on their computer or tablet and will be sent a text message with a PIN number. Customers can then drive up to the Click and Collect lockers, enter the PIN and collect their shopping. As simple as that.

In the current scenario, customers are losing confidence in their online orders reaching them on time, especially during Christmas, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Imagine having to explain your 5 year old the concept of delayed delivery due to excessive online orders. The other downside from a retailer POV is the ever increasing cost in real estate, which makes setting up a full-fledged store in every locality of the city, a distant dream. With the Click and collect model as an extension to your current set up, your store can ensure the customer gets their preferred size of cold turkey, with all the trimmings, just before Christmas. And all that without having to stand in a line. Imagine the loyalty this could drive!

To quantify the size of this market opportunity that Waitrose is tapping: $80M of their $930M sales last year was through the ‘Click and Collect’ model. Other major retailers like Amazon, Tesco, Sainsbury, Coles and Boots have seen this trend evolve and have a substantial investment in this setup. The only problem this model is now throwing up, is the limited no. of slots available for pick up. The customers can’t seem to get enough of this ‘fad’. And why wouldn’t they. If you got a guarantee that you would have your order delivered and can pick it up on the way back from work, at a convenient location like a subway stop for example, you are bound to adapt and adopt.

So how do the big guns make this happen? They probably have scores of people working the wires in the background to make the logistics of a ‘click and collect’ model work, right? Wrong. All you need is a strong partner in analytics to help you adapt to this market trend. Manthan offers you solutions that can see you through your retail transformation and adapt to this new, omnichannel, store experience.

How?

Manthan’s Retail Analytics solution can proactively give you business recommendations around attribution, inventory, assortment localization and help you forecast demand better. In other words, imagine a solution that can weave inventory and market intelligence that could enable your store to place a ‘Available for Click and Collect’ button next to specific items on your e-commerce portal.

Their Customer Analytics solution gives you a single view of the customer which gets you making product recommendations that is actually ‘backed by data’. You can segment guests, analyze your promotions, and execute an omnichannel campaign through their powerful ‘machine learning based’ recommendation engine. Couple this with the execution capability of their TargetOne solution, you can truly bring the whole, ‘show ads on their laptop, collect orders placed on a tablet and send a message on the mobile’ experience to life.

Increase Same Store Sales

July 28, 2017 7:19 am No Comments July 28, 2017

Increasing competition, rising costs, wage inflation etc. have led to disappointing same store sales growth and declining traffic counts for the restaurant industry in the last few years and this trend is going to continue for the next few years. Read report. Its important to understand what the key drivers of business are and focus your energy and resources on things that matter.
Growth in sales of a restaurant chain can be achieved by a combination of Market expansion and Same store sales growth. For any restaurant, the most important metric for success is the same store sales growth. What is Same Store Sales growth you ask? Its increasing sales of existing restaurants over time. While expanding the market and increasing customer reach is necessary and strategically important, same store sales growth is a strong indicator of health of the business and is the only sustainable solution in the long term.

The 3 main factors that affect same store sales are:

Number of guests visiting the restaurant
Number of times each guest is visiting the restaurant
Amount each guest is spending per visit

Number of guests visiting the restaurant

Growth can be achieved by adding new guests, however the challenge, specially in matured markets for restaurant chains is that the scope to keep adding new guests goes down with time. This is amplified when there is intense competition, large number of restaurants and a small area under each restaurant. Restaurant Marketing Metrics notes that acquiring a new customer is six to seven times more expensive than keeping an existing customer. Thus, while bringing in new guests is strategically important, it is not easy and the success of a restaurant is really determined by its ability to make the most of its repeat customers.

Amount spent per visit

In F&B unlike other industries there is a limited capacity to consume in a visit/order. After all, the “basket” can only be so big! While this does not mean that there is no upsell/cross-sell potential, there is potential to fill the basket when the guests are not purchasing enough items. For example, adding sides and beverages and replacing low value items with high value items etc. The scope is definitely limited.

Visit frequency of guest

Visit frequency of a guest is the number of times a guest visits a restaurant in the period, as basket value has limitations in terms of the scope for growth visit frequency becomes the most important driver of sales. More about increasing the frequency of guests at your restaurant in my other blog.

If you are interested in increasing your same store sales growth, you should check out what Manthan is doing in this area. They have some really cool success stories in this case study and offer further tips for your restaurant in this data sheet.

Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any thoughts or questions about this article.

Also, read our blog “Advanced Analytics in The Restaurant Industry” to learn more about Restaurant Analytics and Restaurant Marketing.

Increasing Guest Frequency in Restaurants

July 28, 2017 7:03 am No Comments July 28, 2017

For the un-initiated, visit frequency of a guest is the number of times a guest visits a restaurant in the period. It is an important driver of sales, if not the most. So the big question:

How can you drive guest frequency in your restaurant?

To increase visit frequency, it is important to understand how guests perceive you and why they are or aren’t coming in as regularly as you would like. What makes a guest visit and continue to revisit the restaurant is the overall experience he/she gets. Experience can mean different things to different people but is mostly a combination of:

Taste/Menu
Perceived Value (Price)
Service
Ambience/Atmosphere

Identifying/Understanding what drives a particular guest to revisit is not an easy task for sure. The guest doesn’t explicitly talk about their experience (at least not all of them), however guests still tell us this through:

Their orders
- What are they ordering?
- When are they ordering?
- How are they ordering?
- How much are they ordering?
Their in-store behavior
- What do they do in the restaurant/on the website/on the app
What are they saying in
- Surveys
- Feedback
- Social media

It is very important to leverage data from all these sources to understand the guest and personalize the experience based on what you know about him/her. You can do this through:

Guest Segmentation

Segment guests into actionable groups based on purchase behavior, taste etc. and leverage insights about segments to design unique marketing campaigns that influence loyalty and frequency of visits.

Digital Engagement

Drive conversion on your web and mobile channels by understanding behavior, preferences and content engagement on those channels.

Real Time engagement

Sense and respond to specific guest events at POS, ecommerce and mobile apps with relevant, timely messages.

Feedback Insights

Analyze feedback, survey, social data to get insights about guest experience which can then be used to engage with guests appropriately.

There is so much you can learn from the actions and achieve the optimal level of personalization for your guests but it’s an uphill battle without the right tools. I recommend you check out what Manthan is doing in this area. They have some really cool success stories in this case study and offer further tips for your restaurant in this data sheet.

4 Things That Will Make Me Use Your Restaurant’s Mobile App

July 26, 2017 6:25 am No Comments July 26, 2017

The costliest piece of real estate in the world today is the 1sq cm that an app icon occupies on your phone.

So, if you want to get your app to reside on your customer’s phone, you better be ready to spend 100s of thousands of dollars in marketing and promotions. This would still not guarantee that customers will not uninstall after the promotions end or stop using it after the first couple of times.

(more…)

Instore Real-time Personalization: Relevant, Contextual and Rewarding Customer Engagement

February 15, 2017 6:58 am No Comments February 15, 2017

Pick up any newspaper and you will see hundreds of advertisement luring customers to one retailer or the other. Radio and TV blare jingles in tune with the brand promise of various products and urge the customers to engage with them. However, big budget marketing efforts as they are, how much of an impact do you think they make on an individual customer? Compare this to a personalized message that one receives on her mobile, identifying her as a distinct shopper, pre-empting her shopping need. The personalised message guides her to the best offer on the product/category that she is most likely to shop, and that too while she is still inside the store, trying to make up her mind on what to buy! Which of these above scenarios do you think the customer is more likely to respond to?

(more…)

Customer Centric Assortment Tuning strategies

October 6, 2016 8:51 am No Comments September 24, 2024

Customer centricity has become a business imperative driven by the consumerization wave and e-tailing which provides consumers with a plethora of options to choose from. Retailers that adopt product sourcing and development strategies aligned with what the customer wants stand to have a better chance of success.”Turning customer-centric” can be achieved by investing in easy to adopt, advanced technologies that make execution a natural progression from mere static analytics.

Assortment tuning driven by Analytics

Such technologies facilitate information on customer purchase behavior across multiple channels, which then act as a feed for the creation of Customer Centric assortments for every touch-point, thereby maximizing salability. Assortment tuning has been done by merchandisers for decades, but customer centric tuning is the need of the hour.

Keener understanding of the evolving market trends, local trends in buying patterns as well as the customer segments by geography, demographic and psychographic tastes is critical.

This can be addressed by customer profiling and analytics that help a retailer understand customer behavior and buying patterns; and then tuning the assortment based on geography, demographics and psychographics.

Gartner observes that “Without advanced analytic capabilities, retailers will not be able to compete in the digitalized marketplace”.*

But how? – Customer centricity in action

For instance, a store carrying mid range and premium goods across different age bands must be able to tune the assortment by store and season, taking into account the characteristics of consumers living near the store. If people living near the Springfield store have middle class income and are comprised of millenial buyers, then the assortment must include mid-range goods but also have some high end goods for aspiration buying. Space allocated to the fashion preferred by younger buyers should be more than the fashion preferred by baby boomers. This kind of assortment tuning needs to happen by location and channel to create a desirable experience for the consumer.

Customer centric assortments are an outcome of using a collection of customer and sales data and related analytics to come up with an assortment mix, tuned by geography as well as demographic and psychographic attributes. Validity and success of the tuned assortment needs to be measured and analyzed again to improve business continuously. Thus a transformation in the way assortment is planned and managed in an information- centric culture is needed.

Learn how you seamless integrate analysis and insights into action and make the shift from Product Centricity to Customer Centricity on this interactive customer centric merchandising page.

Manthan Retail Analytics and Customer Centric Assortments

Manthan Retail Analytics offers the much required link between discovery and execution with its combination of comprehensive pre-built (out-of–the box) and self-service analytics that brings to surface actionable merchandising insights.

With modern business intelligence capabilities that span descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics, Manthan Retail Analytics helps retailers localize assortments, design promotions, optimize pricing strategies and align product placements. All based on customer needs and preferences. This is achieved by combining customer behavior, buying patterns, geo-spatial, census data with product, sales information to predict and prescribe merchandising actions.

A 3Billion, Multi-format retailer partnered with Manthan in an effort to move toward customer-centric business planning for its fashion business. Customer segmentation using Manthan’s clustering algorithm, helped the retailer reclaim an average of 5% of lost sales and reduce out-of-stocks from 7% to a more customer-friendly level.

* Retailers Find Success Using Self-Service and Advanced Analytics, Robert Hetu, 24 April 2015

Author Archive