Customer Data

As e-commerce is expected to account for 22 percent of global retail sales by 2023, all brands must find new ways to elevate their digital presence. Smart brands need to evaluate their go-to-market strategy so that they get a complete picture of their customers' shopping journeys by analyzing offline and online customer sentiment. These types…

Data security is playing an increasingly important role when it comes to the retail industry and its day-to-day operations. It's especially important for retailers as it embodies customer and payment transactions, data entry, and houses inventory and personal information throughout your entire infrastructure. While security is currently not a top priority for retailers, many of…

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies should be eager to reclaim the customer relationship from retailers and innovate through strategies such as direct-to-consumer e-commerce, especially given heightened urgency resulting from COVID-19. Strategically collecting and understanding customer data creates value for all parties through direct feedback on consumer behavior. Consumers are better understood and served, while CPG…

Over the past couple of years, data privacy has been a focal point among executives and government leaders. In the wake of major scandals involving the likes of Facebook, officials have enacted measures like GDPR and CCPA in an effort to curb the mishandling of data — and give peace of mind to customers about their personal information.…

The retail experience was undergoing a transformation even before the current pandemic forced massive changes in shopping behavior. A 2019 survey revealed that 92 percent of 1,400 retail leaders identified "reinventing the customer experience" as their top business priority. However, with the new reality we’ve all been forced into, the stakes for retailers are higher…

The retail industry has ridden its share of economic waves over time, but no sudden downturn has unleashed quite the level of uncertainty — and urgent need for adaptation — as the current COVID-19 pandemic. The ongoing crisis has laid bare the vulnerabilities of many brands’ current data strategies and highlighted the need for a…

Between November 2019 and January 2020, shoppers across the U.S. bought a record amount of goods, about $1.1 trillion, approximately 5 percent more than in 2018 over the same period, according to Deloitte. This is good news for the fashion and beauty industry at large, however, there’s a growing problem in retail that may reach…

In today’s shopping environment, consumer habits change by the day. One day shoppers may browse social media for a particular product, and the next, they browse different websites for the same product. Consumer behavior was already shifting towards digital before the coronavirus crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its stay-at-home orders, has taught even the most…

In part one of this article, I examined the challenges that the retail sector has faced since the beginning of the pandemic, and its inability to rely on traditional historic consumer data when it comes to meeting consumer needs. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, however, could be the key to providing retailers with the…

It was a ticking time bomb: in a pre-COVID, increasingly omnichannel-driven world, many areas of North America and Europe were already oversaturated with physical retail. And now that the COVID-19 pandemic has either forced or prompted consumers to shop differently — often online for the first time — the shift to e-commerce has dramatically accelerated. Without…