Retail

In the digital world, customers often expect their problems and requests to be met with near-enough immediate action and solutions. To do this well, retailers need to establish a solid customer engagement strategy that takes into account a number of actions including:

Footfall on May Day bank holiday (6th May) helped contribute to the strong month with the number of shoppers up by +8.4% on levels last year.

Retailers are set to gain a better understanding of store traffic, as Ipsos Retail Performance takes its people counting technology a step further with a technological ‘first’.

Despite the immediate convenience of online shopping, the bricks and mortar retail industry is standing strong against the competition. By understanding where they stand in the market, retailers can create effective and informed strategies to keep traffic as high as possible. As the industry is ever changing, this is what they can expect over the coming year.

Understanding how effective your retail kiosk is at converting sales is a tricky science. Often, operators are selling to customers in very high traffic concourse areas in mall and travel retail environments. So how do you understand what is attracting those that do stop to your business?

In an industry ruled by competition, setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and organizing audits are often a store manager’s first steps towards improvement. By understanding customer patterns, retailers can improve the efficiency of their processes in order to increase sales, traffic, and overall profitability.

All retailers face day-to-day challenges, yet despite today’s challenging climate, there are still plenty of opportunities to be had. By conducting a detailed retail SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis, actionable insights can be gained to help retailers understand the future of their own organisation.

The Retail Think Tank members give their views on the prospects for retail in 2019.

Earlier in the year we headed to NRF, and here’s our summary of retail trends in 2019, and what you should expect in the retail sector over the next 12 months.