We small business owners really could learn a thing or two from the Krogers, Wegmans and Whole Foods of the world. Grocery stores truly epitomize a classic consumer marketing case study:
Quick, high-volume turnover
Wide range of consumer demographics
Seemingly infinite product placement scenarios
Tens of thousands of products, including global brands and private labels
There are plenty more… but for now, let’s leave it at that and focus on the end user. After all, those people out there buying groceries don’t just eat and shop — they move on to consume other goods and services, including the ones offered by your company.
How do the big grocery chains engage their customers? You probably have the evidence right in your wallet: those “club cards” that give you all kinds of savings at no apparent cost to you. A few dollars of savings is enough incentive for you to run your card through the scanner–and the rich demographic profile now associated with this collection of consumer products in your shopping cart is worth more than a few bucks to them.
Thanks to collaborative filtering, that data can be used to make predictions about what you’ll buy next time, with several possible conclusions, including:
Help close the sale with some more savings
Optimize allocation of inventory on store shelves
Test the consumer’s reactions to an upcoming product launch
Steer the consumer’s attention to similar products which are overstocked
Convert shoppers into loyal repeat customers who just love the savings!
This is, once again, the Long Tail at work. The grocery chain, having invested in very cheap technologies to collect this consumer data and continually refine its store visitors’ profiles at a tiny incremental cost, now has a broad set of insights with which to bump up its store’s margins.
Anyone can predict that ice cream will sell well in August. But really, how many store managers would instinctively know which of their top sixteen savory snack brands to position on the front end of Aisle 2 during September?
An entrepreneur can arrive at the same kind of insights, by leveraging local search on the Internet.
Set yourself up in all the local channels, using both organic search and paid search placement. Install analytics software to follow the range of keywords driving traffic and sales. If clicks aren’t enough, there are also call tracking technologies out there which can do the exact same thing through the telephone.
Enough marketing principles; time for some fun. Here’s a glimpse of the shopping experience of the near future, brought to you by the Apple iPhone — particularly the Maps application delivered by Google. Watch as Steve Jobs demonstrates the future of consumer behavior in about 90 seconds:
Quick, high-volume turnover
Wide range of consumer demographics
Seemingly infinite product placement scenarios
Tens of thousands of products, including global brands and private labels
There are plenty more… but for now, let’s leave it at that and focus on the end user. After all, those people out there buying groceries don’t just eat and shop — they move on to consume other goods and services, including the ones offered by your company.
How do the big grocery chains engage their customers? You probably have the evidence right in your wallet: those “club cards” that give you all kinds of savings at no apparent cost to you. A few dollars of savings is enough incentive for you to run your card through the scanner–and the rich demographic profile now associated with this collection of consumer products in your shopping cart is worth more than a few bucks to them.
Thanks to collaborative filtering, that data can be used to make predictions about what you’ll buy next time, with several possible conclusions, including:
Help close the sale with some more savings
Optimize allocation of inventory on store shelves
Test the consumer’s reactions to an upcoming product launch
Steer the consumer’s attention to similar products which are overstocked
Convert shoppers into loyal repeat customers who just love the savings!
This is, once again, the Long Tail at work. The grocery chain, having invested in very cheap technologies to collect this consumer data and continually refine its store visitors’ profiles at a tiny incremental cost, now has a broad set of insights with which to bump up its store’s margins.
Anyone can predict that ice cream will sell well in August. But really, how many store managers would instinctively know which of their top sixteen savory snack brands to position on the front end of Aisle 2 during September?
An entrepreneur can arrive at the same kind of insights, by leveraging local search on the Internet.
Set yourself up in all the local channels, using both organic search and paid search placement. Install analytics software to follow the range of keywords driving traffic and sales. If clicks aren’t enough, there are also call tracking technologies out there which can do the exact same thing through the telephone.
Enough marketing principles; time for some fun. Here’s a glimpse of the shopping experience of the near future, brought to you by the Apple iPhone — particularly the Maps application delivered by Google. Watch as Steve Jobs demonstrates the future of consumer behavior in about 90 seconds:
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