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Using data to enhance customer experience

Gain insights to grow your return on investment

A personal experience. It’s not a new expectation of customers in retail environments and those stores that have assistants on hand to cater for their customers’ needs, sometimes even before the customer knows they need them, have always had a winning point of difference.

Now, though, with the competition from online stores also creating pinch points, customers are expecting a seamless experience, both in terms of branding and in terms of their journey to purchase, finding new ways to give a personal experience have become critical. This is where data can make a big difference for your store. Tim de Ruiter, International Business Manager at PPDS, takes a look…

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What does retail data look like?

Big data is a large volume of data that can be used to discover patterns and trends relating to people’s behaviour and interactions. For retail, collecting and using big data offers a greater understanding of consumer shopping habits and how to attract new customers.

It can enable stores to create those personal experiences that customers are craving, making recommendations based on what they’ve been looking at and how they are making their journey through the store, and improving customer service. Big data can also support forecasting and help store managers with strategic decisions, all based on analysis.

In short, retail analytics uses big data to optimise pricing, to support supply chain management, and to improve customer loyalty.

Collecting data in retail environments

Clearly there is a far more compelling reason for customers to share their data in an online environment – at least a minimum set of information is needed for delivery of a product, and with cookies and clever technology, their journey from the home page to the point of purchase can all be analysed.

In physical stores, managers may collect data using loyalty programs, allowing collection of data including spending habits. Now, though, there is a new way of collecting data, with no potential breach of data protection, as we can personalise experience without getting quite so personal with the data collected. Sounds complex, but it’s not!

Using digital display solutions for data collection and personalised experience

Today, using Android powered digital displays, intelligent in store cameras and super smart software, retailers are able to personalise experience based on a customer’s journey through the store, delivering a set of information that’s informed by factors such as gender, age, colour preferences, external factors like the weather or special events, and more. Data can be used to inform the answers to many retail questions, such as:

  • How many people entered the store on an given day and at a specific time?
  • For how long did shoppers look at my latest store entrance promotion?
  • How long did my customers stay in the store?
  • How long did my customers wait for service?
  • What is the age range and gender breakdown of my customers? How can I improve the journey around the store to encourage purchase of a particular product?
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The PPDS Intelligent Signage Solution for Retail enables this personalised interactivity and data insights. It also supports lift and learn capabilities, using sensors on products to know when a customer has picked up their choice of product from a selection on display, and activating supporting information on the digital signage around them. This greatly enhances customer experience with better informed buying decisions.

Digital displays can also be set for efficiency. They can be programmed to switch on in time for store opening and switch off again at the end of the trading day. That saves power and air conditioning costs, as well as helping to prolong the life of the display.

Using a connected camera and AI, the PPDS Intelligent Signage Solution for Retail can count visitors, gathering demographic data and measuring their attention span, length of visit, and queuing times, and allowing managers to target screen content to customers based on these.

Using the data gathered, store managers can understand their store occupancy and how long customers spend looking at particular products and displays. If a queue forms, the PPDS Intelligent Signage Solution for Retail can raise an alert. Over the longer term, an understanding of visitor numbers and wait times can be used to plan staff numbers and shifts. AI can even be programmed to recognise staff and exclude them from customer counts.

All of these invaluable insights can improve your return on investment, delivering greater sales – and therefore profit – potential, while delivering efficiencies in staffing, whether that’s the number of assistants on the shop floor, the time it takes to change content (now automated rather than a manual task), or the hours managers may have previously invested into analysing data without AI.

To find out more about how we can support increased return on investment opportunities with digital display solutions for retail, contact your local PPDS sales manager today.

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