How about the data that customers are willing to share? I’m continually amazed at how reluctant retailers are to just ASK their customers about their preferences. Customers understand the quid pro quo – you track my data, but in return I get personalization and relevance. The only reason why consumers would be reluctant to share is because they’re not seeing enough value out of the relationship. And that should be a warning sign to retailers that they’re not doing enough to keep customers engaged for the long haul. Which means rather than shy away from asking consumers what they’re willing to share, retailers should embrace it – if a lot of consumers opt out, then you’ve got a much bigger problem than those opt-outs. You have a value proposition challenge.

I do think in-store data will become part of the data that is used, beyond transaction logs. But retailers will have to be careful about tying PII to in-store visits beyond the purchase – that definitely seems to cross a threshold into “creepy.”

Obtaining first party data to drive personalization is now table stakes. Unfortunately, most brands still don’t have a fully thought-out strategy for collecting, vetting and using. E-mail and mobile number/ID are critical as they are the “match points” for many sources. Especially if appending third-party data or using to target across digital channels. But purchase history and engagement activity (email activity, store visits, etc.) are also very important.

The more store data, the better. We have to keep investing in ways to maximize the value of every store visit. Most categories still see 80 percent of their sales flow through the store, and we have just scratched the surface of the data available to us from those visits. Transactions are of course important pieces of the puzzle, but so are shopper behaviors and sentiments. High-tech solutions like video traffic analysis need to be deployed. Low-tech solutions, like having associates talk to shoppers and simply ask them for feedback, must also be incorporated to develop a holistic shopper persona.

Personalization needs to be driven by the CX a retailer is trying to execute. My sense is that it’s becoming table stakes to personalize on transactional and behavioral data where the outcome is a more tailored sales offer. The contrast with travel, hospitality and insurance sectors that rely less on transactional data is interesting. I think about how these other service industries use personalization throughout the customer relationship (your life stage, family situation, interests, etc. – relying on a lot more than just transactional and browsing behaviors). The challenge retailers have is determining the role of personalization beyond offers to really delivering a differentiated CX – I think too many fixate on marketing offers. That’s an analytics problem requiring a good data foundation and strategy.

When we get into topics like this one about “data” and retail’s desperation to understand the human being, every cell of my body cringes. I do try to understand, I really do. It’s just that nothing could be more opposite to being “personal” than this kind of thinking. This is not a criticism of Tom’s article at all, he’s reporting very clearly on what is actually happening. We need a “personalization strategy?” Really? Isn’t personalization an innate part of being human? Who would say to someone “I’d really like to get to know you. Please tell me about your recent purchases, email activity and mobile actions.” Some are moving as far from being personal as possible by going to third-party data. And look at what you get: “a sea of data breaches, with many calling for more transparency and regulations.” Not feeling the love here. What is really sad is that counting on your sales associates to have a personal focus in serving your customers and looking at how you’re organizing your own POS are… Read more »

Retailers in general are getting much better with personalization efforts, often a core business strategy. What tends to differentiate leaders is the ability to create deeper insights via differentiated customer engagement (data). Think about websites that are tailored with relevant content and messages (beyond recommendations) and mobile apps that customers actually use, will happily opt in and open while in-store because the retailer is providing value-added services.

Driving better penetration and use of such customer engagement platforms allows the retailer to ask occasional (smartly crafted and brief) questions which in turn enable the retailer to create and leverage new data sets and observations that go much deeper in understanding customer tastes and preferences.

More (and differentiated) observations = better insights and actions.

The #1 reason people BUY a product: human emotion driven by individual sensory-preferences. Ecommerce is represented by multi-billion dollar verticals of products purchased based solely on human emotion and individual sensory preferences like clothes, shoes, accessories, home furnishings, homes, art, cars and the like. Current personalization solutions operate on principals of binary and linear logic. While humans operate on a cognitive, INVISIBLE system of individual human preference, controlling purchase behavior & product decisions. In the area of e-commerce, products are devoid of sensory cues available in the physical world. To understand an individual shopper’s sensory preferences, sensory-profile her/his purchases. Especially those products purchased and not returned. Purchase history is the roadmap of individual human preference intelligence. Yet, still today, purchase history is locked in retailer data silos, useless, subjected to antidotal interpretations by systems “solving for” various forms of segmentation. This will soon change. Human Preference Intelligent enabled APIs leveraging AI/ML are opening up new ways of thinking, creating cognitive applications to “solve for individualized sensory-preference personalized” solutions. Subjective variables beyond human computation “solving for”… Read more »

Retailers should be using any and every data source that helps paint a complete picture of a consumer’s preferences and what is in their closet/garage/pantry. It is a little surprising how few retailers report that they are incorporating POS system data and information from sales associates. Retailers should also incorporate external data points such as context like weather and trends that may impact consumer purchase intent.

Customer context considers environmental conditions such as current and forecasted weather, time of day, time of year, media (news), social media, traffic, holidays, events, and other conditions that impact a consumer’s purchase decision.

To be successful, information must be instantly accessible to store associates in real-time. Without real-time data, information provided internally and externally is out-of-date and risks being inaccurate and out of context. Retailers must collect, analyze and respond, in real-time, to their customer’s interactions across all touch points.
With real-time customer context, sales associates can offer customer intimacy and enhanced services like guided selling and personalized offers that are relevant to the individual customer.