Data Mining Can Solve These Retailers Problems

by Beverly McNally I love to read and write about technology such as

The retail world is frequently grappling with the challenges-Isn’t it?

Recently, major high-street retailers, like Marks & Spencer, Debenhams and Topshop, got a bout of massive losses, as per Guardian. To get out of it, Marks & Spencer had decided to close its stores.

Retailers are like a burnt child who dreads the fire. They know how much loss they suffer on making an incorrect decision. Assume the quantum of hesitation that they would have faced while embracing the online stores.

Didn’t the idea of hefty loss scare them ever?

Although business is a game of taking risks, yet you don’t intend to invite bankruptcy deliberately. In the nutshell, you should intensely brainstorm before making any decision.

Now, the question pops- how can you make any decision. Should it be taken all of a sudden? Or, should you explore the market and gather the customers’ point of view?

Frankly speaking, the data-driven decisions mark an edge over a random decision. You should spend some time while mining data. This process is, indeed, magical. It reveals hidden patterns, as of shopping behavior, sales or marketing loops. In other words, the patterns that you can’t see, this digging lets you interact with. This is why the retail industry is inclining towards the data mining.

Let’s have a look into a few things that data mining helps to deal with the challenges in the retail.

Customer’s Insight: The customers are no less than the god for retailers. But, it can be so if they know what their customers prefer. To unveil what they are fond of, retailers can run a survey offline or online. Subsequently, retail data analytics derive viable solutions of the particular challenges in retailing.

Barclaycard data presented an incredible example on it. It collected data of the previous year (2017), pulling the fact that expenditure on entertainment is 10% more than that of the last year. Moreover, Brits spent more, i.e. 11.4%, on the telecoms.

These statistics explicitly state that Brits prefer spending on telecom and entertainment. So, the card retailers would store more cards and data packs while keeping into account their preferences.

Indulgent Treats: The Hershey Company published an infographics of its data mining on https://www.thehersheycompany.com/content/dam/corporate-us/documents/pdf/CStoreSalesByTheNumbers.pdf.

It claims that the shoppers in c-stores have plenty of opportunities to swell their profit margin, if they invest in indulgent treats. The study shows 98.9% shoppers from household like candy, mint and gum. By keeping this fact in a view, retailers of c-stores made the highest gross margins via indulgent treats.

So, it’s a golden opportunity to engage the customers by throwing indulgent treats.

Tailoring Planogram:

Planogram is an awesome practice of shelving specific retail products to promote their sales. I bet that you would have witnessed different types of shelves in a retail shop. Wall shelving, end bays, corner bays, pegboard shelving, freestanding shelving, magazine shelving, refrigerated shelving units and stacking wire baskets are a few to name.

Each shelf is installed with a specific proposition. Once you get the customer insight successfully, you can customize your planogram accordingly. Let’s say, snacks of a particular brand are the hot potato. You can keep them on the freestanding shelves at the checkout corners. This small move can compute extra margin through its sale.

Focus to gather the data of the thing that maximum folks like to have. Then, Customize planograms accordingly to explore its magnificence.

Digital Experience:

The digital space is rapidly evolving. It has enhanced the footfall of folks in the retail stores. If you look at the profit of the Foxtrot-an on-demand beer, food and commodities retailing, let’s say, you’ll be surprised. It raised a $6 million in March 2018, according to builtinchicago.com.

“What we’ve found is that every time we open a new brick-and-mortar store, the delivery business in that neighborhood explodes,” said Foxtrot CEO Michael LaVitola.

Swiggy, Food Panda and Zomato are also making millions of dollars out of digital orders. However, the brick-and-mortar restaurants are emerging the best aide. While merging digital experience with the local hotels/restaurants, they are curating what the customers like to have any time.

The eCommerce is going an extra mile. It’s just because of the awareness. Restaurants and hotels have been there, but they did not receive as many footfalls as they are getting now. Online food vendors have made them a household name. Data mining showed its excellence in merging all of them together under a hood. Now, a layman knows that the food is delivered from where.