Extra tags: e-commercedata analyticsData Insights
by Remus Lim, Vice President for Asia Pacific and Japan, Cloudera
The retail sector is undergoing a time of resurgence, and a retail business’ ability to harness data will make or break its success in this period of change.
The reopening of Asian economies and societies in this past year has boded well for the region’s retail sector. According to market research consultancy Euromonitor International, the Asian retail market is expected to experience a compound annual growth rate of 7% from 2021 to 2026. For example, in Singapore, the Singapore Retail Association recorded that retail sales have grown 18.1% year on year as of July 2022.
Still, retail’s rosy narrative must be followed with caution. News of a larger impending economic slowdown calls for retail businesses to remain adaptable by identifying and driving new revenue streams. Revisiting the shopping experience could be the perfect opportunity to do so.
Rise of experiential retail
The pandemic’s e-commerce boom - which has led to 70 million digital consumers in Southeast Asia alone - has been followed by the rise of experiential retail. This coincides with the retail sector’s recovery to produce a timely opportunity for businesses to adapt.
Experiential retail creates an immersive experience by combining the convenience of online shopping - made popular during the pandemic - and the personal interactions found in brick-and-mortar stores. Customers will get to enjoy a seamless online and offline experience through personalization and community building.
A March 2022 McKinsey study gave further insight into this, by describing it as a “zero” experience. This includes providing “zero” difference in channels through omni-channel marketing, and “zero” assistance for transactions via personalized pick-ups.
Shifting focus from the business to the customer
Creating experiential retail requires a strong understanding of customer behaviour, which is how data offers its hand. For businesses that utilize e-payments or run on e-commerce platforms, this data is already regularly collected for insights such as year-on-year profits or business modelling.
The real shift to achieving experiential retail lies in putting the customer first.
Businesses must acquire a suitable end-to-end data management and analytics platform to ingest, process, analyse and model data effectively in order to make sense of every bit of their data. Retrieving and processing this data quickly paves the way for businesses to integrate their online and in-store experiences along the customer journey. These capabilities will allow businesses to derive greater value, from becoming more attuned to their customer’s needs, and providing improved service, to better managing their supply chain.
Data insights can be used to form meaningful customer profiles on wants and needs to guide product localization and also deliver the next best offer recommendations. Customers can purchase their products online and perform in-store pickups, where they can interact with curated merchandising and spaces which have been designed to meet their needs based on behavioural and footfall data.
Businesses around the world are embarking on this journey. For example, we are working with oil and retail Thai conglomerate PTTOR to power their organization’s data architecture, allowing them to design omnichannel experiences geared towards online and in-person shopping at their gas stations and restaurants. We have also worked with German retailer NEW YORKER to harness their inventory data, leading to improved retail operations and order monitoring at their stores for seamless in-store experiences.
Building experiences with the right tools
Customers today have higher expectations when it comes to interacting with brands. Personalized service, consistent experience across platforms and responsive customer service are all parred for the course. Retail businesses must be able to seamlessly pivot to meet these expectations and having real-time data insights processed readily is crucial to making that happen.
The large amounts of data available to businesses can be overwhelming. These can come from inventory data, customer transactions, videos, footfall traffic or sensors which are stored in different sources on-premises and on the cloud.
A hybrid cloud approach enabling access to an organization’s data no matter where it resides will be important. For instance, secure platforms such as the Cloudera Data Platform allow sensitive customer profile data stored on-premise to be cross-referenced against cloud-based real-time footfall data to produce powerful insights on customer behaviour.
Working with technology partners can also accelerate a business’s efforts to be more data-driven.
For example, there is DAVI, a company that visualizes multi-source data to provide insights. Powered by Cloudera’s Data Science Workbench, DAVI’sData Lab program helps its partners to consolidate data from business units and make business-critical decisions. Partners like DAVI can assist retail businesses to distill sharper insights from their data and to pursue new impactful use cases such as precision marketing and research analytics.
Customer centricity with data at the core
It goes without being said that moving forward, a customer-centric data strategy should still be the first step in capitalizing on retail’s resurgence. As businesses generate more data, this development provides them with a perfect opportunity to drive new revenue and growth by marrying their offline and online customer experiences while ensuring that their data is secure.
This strategy thus calls for a suitable data platform that uses data from a variety of sources to optimize the customer experience. Leveraging data lets organizations drive higher conversions and profits through customer insights and data-driven initiatives.