Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of an article from Retail Paradox, Retail Systems Research's weekly analysis of emerging issues facing retailers.
Last year, I predicted that we would see a shift toward "transparent retailing" largely driven by three trends: green retailing, supply chain visibility, and greater use of customer data. Well, as an industry, I don't think we've made much progress on any of these counts.
So rather than make some predictions for 2011, I offer a challenge. Let's just take one of these three -- greater use of customer data. How can you use the information that you've gathered about your customers to make their lives better, easier, and/or more fun?
1. Purchase history analyzer: Just as Safeway offers this service to help club card customers find more healthy eating options, are there ways that this information can help your own customers? Are there items in their purchase history that might qualify for Flexible Spending Account reimbursements that they might have missed? Would any of these be business purchases? Can you predict purchase frequency for replenishment items? Are any of them high-value items that might change a consumer's insurance needs? At some level, these can seem silly or trivial -- but if they help you delight your customers, why wouldn't you do this?
2. Digital receipts: Even if you don't think you'll get out of providing a printed receipt (grocery stores in particular seem to need to be able to show customers how much they saved as they walk to their cars), offer emailed receipts to your customers -- and/or provide them an easy way to get purchase details into whatever financial tools they use, whether that is Mint or Quicken or what-have-you. These personal finance providers are getting very sophisticated. Intuit has launched digital receipt integration this year, for example.
3. Shopping list helper: Using the above-mentioned purchase history analyzer, offer a shopping list builder (must integrate online to phone, by the way) that is pre-populated with high frequency purchase items. Make it easy to add/edit/delete though, because otherwise such a list builder goes from helpful to hopeless in a flash.
Retail in 2011 has to be more relevant to individual customers (hmmm, I'm sensing a theme coming on). And in order to achieve that, retailers need to use all of the assets they have at their disposal -- most especially customer information assets.
Discussion Questions: In what other ways could retailers be further capitalizing on customer data? Which of the suggestions in the article offer the most potential?