GUIDES
How to maximise your sales and customer data
Retail Data Analytics
Optimizing your retail data analytics
It has been said that data is the new currency of today’s digital economy. Using reliable retail analytics tools can help retailers become more data-centric and enable them to make better decisions, generate higher profits, improve their customer service, and ultimately drive their business forward.
In retail, advanced analytics is useful as more and more companies embrace digitalization. Retailers may benefit from using retail data analytics tools to make sense of a huge amount of data containing various information on product details, consumer behavior, conversion rates, as well as shop locations and performance. In addition, these massive data files should be stored in a central location for easy retrieval.
To understand how retail data analytics work, companies should have a clear understanding of retail analytics framework. Retail data analytics is essential to help companies understand their consumers’ purchase habits and how to best meet their demands.
Retail data analytics is the process through which retailers gather data sales and analyze trends. Retail data analytics tools can present the data in an easy-to-understand format by using infographics such as graphs, tables and charts to assist retailers in making insightful business decisions.
Specialized software applications connected to a store’s point of sale, or a place where customers make payments, online stores, as well as advertising platforms, can collect customer data. These software applications can track customers’ frequency of purchase, their preferred products, spending habits, and how they engage with advertising campaigns. The data will then be transmitted to a customer data platform, or CDP. For easy access and efficiency, a CDP stores the data and organizes it into individual customer profiles, also known as single customer view.
When customers make a purchase, a retail software application can generate valuable customer insights such as purchase history and individual profiles, which can be used to assess customer demographics. Companies can use analytics tools to identify their best-selling products, and retail data analytics software can forecast buying trends by evaluating sales and inventory data, allowing stores to adjust their stock volumes as necessary.
Retail analytics use cases
Companies may refer to retail analytics use cases and retail analytics case studies to learn more about the advantages of adopting retail analytics technologies.
Retail analytics, for example, can be used to evaluate sales success by breaking down data silos and gathering all the data files into one central location. By analyzing the data, retailers can improve their sales performance and potentially generate more profits.
Retail analytics tools can assist businesses in regard to supply chain analytics and inventory management. Such tools can help retailers ensure that they have a reliable supplier network so they can optimize their inventory systems. Retail analytics solutions can assist businesses in managing their supply chains more efficiently to deliver a smooth experience for their customers.
Moreover, retail analytics tools can help companies analyze the success factors that drive their product sales, understand their customers’ demands as well as their competitors’ market performance. Such information can help retailers in developing more effective product development strategies, which may include investing in new product lines and improving their existing offers.
Online retail dataset analysis can help companies monitor their customers’ buying decision process, including how customers engage with product displays, and how long it takes for online shoppers to make the final purchase decision. Retail dataset analysis tools may also perform RFM analysis – or the recency, frequency and monetary value of customer purchase – which could help evaluate the lifetime value of customers.
Some retailers might install in-store retail cameras integrated with retail analytics to gather information on foot traffic, sales and customer engagement. Such retail analytics tools can help businesses gain a better understanding of their product performance, customer
purchasing behavior, sales conversion rates and other key metrics so they can develop
more effective marketing strategies and take strategic actions to improve their bottom lines.
Retail analytics tools
Retail analytics tools can give businesses access to valuable customer information, such as store visits and purchase history. With these insights, retailers can have a holistic overview of the purchase journey of their customers in order to provide them with a personalized shopping experience.
A retail data platform can forecast inventory requirements and can provide recommendations on how companies should pick and stage their product inventories based on high-value consumer demand. It can also identify the driving factors as well as the disruptors of customer experience, engagement and retention. A retail data platform can enable retailers to take the appropriate action to achieve tangible results during the critical points in customer journeys and product value chain.
A customer data platform, or CDP, can integrate retail customer data from different sources to provide a 360-degree customer view. The data will be stored in a single central location and can be accessed by various teams within an organization.
Using a retail intelligence software can provide insights and advanced analytics to help stores boost their sales and improve their operations. A retail intelligence software can collect, maintain and analyze retail and e-commerce data from a variety of sources. Data could come from internal e-commerce systems, or from third-party and external e-commerce sites. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are used in retail intelligence software to clean and analyze data files.
Some retailers with physical stores may opt to work with retail analytics companies to collect foot traffic data, analyze shopping behaviors and other important customer success metrics and enable retailers to create an effective in-store customer experience.
Retail analytics companies can provide retail analytics services that can improve customer satisfaction and allow retailers to create an engaging experience for their customers. Using real-time and advanced AI-augmented analytics are considered to be important factors that can help retail businesses in strengthening their digital foothold. Due to the highly competitive retail industry landscape, evolving buying trends and ever-changing customer demands, companies should pay close attention to their retail business and sales analytics strategies.
Retail analytics examples
Retail data analytics can provide retailers with statistical information to help them evaluate their core competencies and specific areas that they need to focus on. Retailers and managers would benefit from strategizing their decisions based on facts, and using retail data
analytics can help companies improve their data gathering techniques and retail reporting.
Retail analytics can be used to obtain high-value data from a range of sources and combine the data to obtain a holistic organizational picture. Examples of data sources for retail industry include video surveillance cameras to assess workflow and customer activity; weather information and how it can impact retail sales; point of sale systems for tracking sales transactions; supply chain systems for managing inventories; and social media platforms to understand customer loyalty and satisfaction as well as monitor competitors’ online activities.
To help retailers understand how the different types of data can be used in actual retail settings, it would be helpful to look at specific retail analytics examples.
For instance, an apparel shop might use retail analytics tools to create a tailored range of items that appeals to its core customer base. By understanding the specific issues faced by its customers, a company can identify its priorities, such as forecasting future sales and client demand.
Restaurants can utilize retail analytics tools to identify their most popular meals, improve their menus, adjust their pricing, track their inventory and reduce food waste, and improve guest experience.
Data in retail
Big data in the retail industry can be used to personalize customer experience, enhance operational efficiency, forecast product demand, and analyze customer journeys.
Prescriptive analytics in the retail industry can assist retailers in developing effective pricing strategies. Retailers can also benefit from using prescriptive analytics solutions to keep track of their inventories and order management patterns. Prescriptive analytics can track various data sources such as customer trends, product availability, and many others, which can assist entrepreneurs in exploring new business opportunities.
When choosing the best retail analytics software for their business, companies should consider some of the important features of a retail analytics tool such as the capacity to integrate and analyze data; generate insights and present data in an easy-to-understand visual format; create reports using data from numerous sources; and be specifically developed for the retail business.
Types of retail analytics
There are four types of retail analytics. Descriptive analytics uses various
metrics such as marketing campaigns, profit and loss statements, and consumer
demographics to provide information on what has happened in the company. Diagnostic analytics can be used to assess historical data to find meaning or patterns in order to
answer the whys in business. Predictive analysis, on the other hand, is the process of forecasting trends and customer behavior to address the question of what will happen in the future. Lastly, prescriptive analytics provides insights into what organizations should do and how they should execute their actions in response to changes in consumer attitude and other factors that may impact their retail business.
Big data analytics can identify consumer behavior, purchase patterns and trends. Big data analytics in the retail market can provide retailers insights on how they can improve their customer service, maintain their existing consumers, and ensure that their products and services meet and satisfy customer demands.
In a business setting, big data refers to massive, complex data sets collected by companies to obtain information on how to improve their operations, provide better customer service, and create personalized marketing campaigns. Knowledge management, on the other hand, is the process of collecting, storing, categorizing and processing data and creating value in the form of knowledge to help companies improve and grow their business performance.
One of the benefits of big data and knowledge management in retail is helping companies understand and engage with customers by creating personalized product suggestions. Retailers can also benefit from big data and knowledge management in assessing, evaluating, and modeling their businesses in real time in order to optimize customer acquisition and conversion, as well as enhance and improve their supply chain management.
Related Articles
📄 Customer Data Platform (CDP)
📄 Customer Loyalty and Retention Strategy
📄 Customer Segmentation Matrix
Combine and enrich your data
Make better, insight-driven decisions
Orchestrate relevant experiences
Master your data in weeks
Our Clients
