Improving Performance Of Brick & Mortar Stores Using Customer Behavior Analytics Essay

Consumers are always satisfied with good customer service. When it comes to retail store customer service and satisfaction it is important because department stores are large in size and finding help can be difficult. Colloquy, a company concerned with building customer value, released a survey and asked 3,000 consumers across five geographical areas to rate their personal experiences with retailers. Macy’s was ranked number one in the department store category, with the most loyal customers. To keep up with technology advances Macy’s has invested time and money into developing a more efficient online shopping site, Macys.com and Macysweddingchannel. This investment cost nearly $300 million in 2006-2008 is being used to scale-up these fast-growing businesses through improvements in delivery efficiency, online site functionality and customer service. To enhance the shopping experience at Macy’s 100 stores in 2007 experienced remodeling and began introducing the most advanced POS registers and systems to the sales floors nationwide. Macy’s passion is product and people. There continuing pursuit is to have unique fashionable merchandise ready for customer satisfaction. Macy’s promise is to always carry the best brands and the most-wanted items. They also believe in hiring the right employees. With the right employees, there will be a sense of motivation and helpfulness. The American Customer Satisfaction Index covers 200 companies’ products and

The technology changes affecting REI are not unique to the company. Nationwide, consumers are ‘wisening up’ to new technologies and they are increasingly demanding expanded services from the companies they do business with. While the dot com revolution of the early 2000’s projected the death of traditional brick-and-mortar stores, the reality today is that customers are demanding comprehensive shopping experiences, experiences that seamlessly integrate online shopping with visits to traditional stores. For example, an REI customer might choose to purchase a pair of La Sportiva Rock Shoes in-store, order them online and pick them up from a store, or purchase online and have the shoes shipped directly to their home. Technology is not just

However, with ease of purchase and easier returns people are less interested in the experience in a store but the convenience of the transaction and in the end satisfaction. “Retail stores used to be places where merchants would assemble an array of product they've selected for their consumers. That was important because consumers had nowhere else where they could see such a broad array of products” (Kestenbaum 2017). No longer do we care about the sale of an item and how well someone can talk about it. We can easily use the internet to find all of the reviews we could want without ever stepping out of our own homes let alone into a retail store. The consumer wants different things now. They are focused on unique items that are often locally made. The customer wants something that will create a moment or specific emotion whereas generations past have been more focused on a name brand and what may have been main stream or the best of the

Shopping trends over the next 10 years will include more technology with online shopping with tagging, kiosks for easy check-outs when a consumer does venture out, and apps that allow you to

In recent interviews conducted with five target audience members who all shop the Target brand on average once per week, all but one was a Red Card credit card holder. The fifth participant shopped at Target as often as the others, both online and retail, but cited not wanting another credit card as the reason for not having a Red Card. The other four interviewees were all familiar with the 5 percent discount on all purchases, free online shipping with no minimum purchase, and easy in-store returns. One also like the 5 percent donation Target makes to local schools of choice. None mentioned the 5 percent off for one day of shopping for every two prescriptions filled as incentive. Three of the five interviewed said that Target was their online retailer of choice, compared to the other two who stated Amazon as their preference. When asked what improvements, if any, could be made to better service customer needs, all interviewees who offered an answer mentioned website reliability and slowness as areas of concern. Due to these concerns, none participated in designer releases, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday during the past year. Of those interviewed, on average, 12 percent of their total Target shopping was done online vs. 88 percent in store. Once also stated that she would like the ability to make online purchases through the Cartwheel app.

According to A.T. Kearney (2013), the result from online study of 3,200 U.S. and UK customers found that customers spend a large proportion of time inside the brick-and-mortar channel with 61%. The following channels are shopping online and mobile channel, with 31% and 4% respectively (Appendix 1). This figure means that traditional stores persist at the center of retailers’ relationships with customers, although nowadays Omnichannel as online and mobile strategy can help retailer remaining in the market. Therefore, retailers should find a solution that influence to stores and store networks to keep stores at the heart of the customer relationship while managing value across new channels. In addition, the

In 2016, Macy’s, Inc. continued to see double-digit growth in the digital business, reflecting the success of investments in this space (Macy’sInc). They have created one of the best omni channel experiences in the retail industry and is excited about their plans to continue to improve their digital platforms (Macy’sInc). The Macy’s app received accolades in 2016, including L2 listing the app on its Top 10 Department Stores in Digital ranking (Macy’sInc). This is a smart move on behalf of Macy’s. The more they continue to advance by way of technology the more they’ll be able to compete with other major retailers like Amazon and Walmart.

2. Stores use the information that they get from tracking shoppers is that, they use it to see behavior and the mood of the customer. Hoe many minutes they spend in a certain aisle. Also to see how long they look at merchandise before buying it. They also use the information to categorize by sex to see how they differ, by how long they in an aisle or looking at something.

After careful analysis of retail store sales, expansions, restructuring, and competition of online retailers, I have found that Wal-mart stores have continued to thrive through the financial crisis of 2008 and continue to growth through rebranding and continuing to incorporate new technology to provide the highest level of customer service (see figure 6). As technology becomes a bigger part of our lives every day, it becomes more important than ever to increase technology into the shopping experience for the customers. Furthermore, with online retailers providing a wide variety of products, product selection is crucial. Stores that do not provide a large selection of different products will continue to show declines, compared to stores that incorporate new products and various types of single products. Wal-mart has shown that including grocery items into their stores has allowed for a single inclusive shopping experience, and results in increased sales revenue. Single item stores, such as Payless and Radio Shack, that never branched into new product lines, have found themselves closing up shop sooner rather than later (see figure 7). This leads to a primary conclusion that innovative incorporation of technology, research into customer studies of newest trends, and an incorporation of new products to increase the “one-stop” atmosphere in retail stores

Today’s customers are more aware and empowered, and have more bargaining power due to the exponential increase in competition – direct, indirect or substitute. In retailing, they want hassle-free shopping, have less time at their disposal to locate the shop and the merchandise and are reluctant to keep waiting. The modern format retail stores are doing their best to anticipate the customer’s demands and are going all out to redesign their store interiors, offer more choices in varieties and assortments, and are giving as many services as feasible.

The Internet has changed the way we do virtually everything, including the way we shop. However, shopping is not the only thing that has changed. In the last decade we have changed the way, we apply for loans, study, and even plan a vacation. Doing any of these things would have been impossible a few decades ago. At present, online banking, paying bills, ordering new services, and shopping online have become part of our daily lives. Traditional brick-and-mortar stores have been around much longer than online stores, but we cannot deny that online shopping is giving the traditional stores competition. Many consumers still choose to shop at regular brick-and-mortar stores because they like to see and

Furthermore, they offer to the customer the experience to buy in a physical store, compared with Amazon that is one of the strongest competitor, there’s no doubt that the internet, and the mobile web in particular, have changed the way people shop, but there is strong evidence that consumers continue to value the experience of

The traditional retail market has been transformed by technological advances. The internet today has allowed consumers to purchase various products from home ranging from apparel to groceries. The online shopping market has grown significantly within the past decade, leading to many online e-commerce startups such as Amazon, eBay, and mobile start-ups such as Instacart. While e-commerce provides convenience for shopping, it has created major disruption to the traditional shopping industries. Traditional retailers have since faced bankruptcy due to their inability to compete with such start-ups. The traditional American toy store, Toys R Us, announced its state of bankruptcy just last month due to a significant decline in sales. More and more consumers are turning to online giants such as Amazon to purchase daily items as a result of convenience. According to the Washington Post, Toys R Us is just one of more than 300 retailers to file for bankruptcy this year, as Americans ditch the shopping mall in favor of their laptops, smartphones, and tablets (Bhattarai, 2017). Shopping which used to require walking or a vehicle trip to stores is no longer required for consumers with online shopping. Online shopping has appealed to consumers worldwide by encompassing the business aspect of service convenience which constitute saving time and/or effort (Jiang, Yang, and Jun, 2012). For consumers whom have busy lives and those whom are physically disabled, online shopping is a positive

Due to the fast development of the Internet and the growing popularity of online shopping, some argue that the online shopping will substitute store shopping ultimately. For some products such as books and tickets, that might be true, however, for product like apparel - a kind of high-risk and hedonistic product, it is not the case. This essay demonstrates why it is less possible for online apparel shopping to substitute store apparel shopping and how it serves as a complement for store apparel shopping. Finally, some implications on how to make the online apparel shopping more appealing are given.

Shopping is one of the most common social activities in our life. Lingering in one store and another, the customers are looking for the products that meet their requirements and making decisions to purchase while enjoying the leisure time with their families or friends. At the same time, to achieve a better business performance, the retailers try to attract the customers to pay more attention to the products and stay longer in their stores by using various kinds of technologies to surveil the shoppers, such as using cameras to monitor their shopping behavior, tracking their purchased items, and even analyzing these consumers’ background. However, the surveillance of consumers by retail anthropologists is manipulative and unethical