Consumer Analytics

By Brian Ross, [email protected]

In today’s competitive environment, enterprise loyalty is king. Companies must embark on their strategic journey influenced by customer insights. These insights are gained through transactional data and allow for the shifting of mindset, culture and strategy across the entire enterprise – everywhere from merchandising and store layout to pricing. Sharing this information across the organization — beyond simply the marketing department – is essential to customer-centric merchandising.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Belk has engaged the services of ChannelAdvisor, a global e-commerce platform provider, for comparison shopping strategy and data feed management. Belk is utilizing ChannelAdvisor’s Comparison Shopping and Flex Feed solutions to skillfully create, optimize and distribute Belk’s product data feeds to multiple shopping engines such as Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Nextag and PriceGrabber as well as to a variety of other commerce partners.

New York -- Consumer confidence unexpectedly rose in July as Americans were more optimistic about the short-term outlook than they were about their current conditions, according to a report released Tuesday by The Conference Group, private research group. The report showed that while consumers are feeling better about the economy, they remain wary about the labor markets.

San Mateo, Calif. -- A survey by The E-tailing Group and MyBuys found that consumers are more comfortable sharing data with retailers than they are with social networks, especially if it enhances the shopping experience.

New York -- Modell's Sporting Goods has added a mobile component to its MVP loyalty program. The sporting goods retailer is using Key Ring Reward Cards’ mobile coupon and customer acquisition platform to introduce mobile into its loyalty marketing mix for its 150 retail locations.

Pittsburgh -- First Insight, which provides predictive analytics generated from online consumer engagements, announced an agreement with The Limited. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The First Insight solution uses online social engagement tools to gather real-time preference, pricing and sentiment data on new products. This information is filtered through First Insight’s predictive analytic models to determine which products present the greatest opportunity.

ARMONK, N.Y. — IBM's fifth annual Online Retail Holiday Readiness report has uncovered that 2012 may just be the year of mobile.

Based on data from more than 500 U.S. retailers, the report found that online mobile sales increased 88.8% in second quarter 2012, compared with year-ago period.

What's more, IBM is forecasting that mobile sales will reach 20% of total online holiday sales this holiday season, and that mobile traffic will close in on 25%.

San Diego -- Research released Thursday by Transaction Wireless and Aberdeen Group, which examined the benefits of mobile and digital gifting and emerging trends in mobile and social frontiers, found a shift toward digital gifting.

In fact, online gift cards have risen to prominence in the past few years and are now used by nearly a third (28%) of retailers. More than half – 61% – plan to use mobile gift cards, and 43% of customers prefer to use the mobile medium for gift cards.

Fashion retailer The Limited just got smarter about its purchasing and pricing decisions.

First Insight, a provider of predictive analytics, announced that it had reached an agreement with The Limited to provide predictive analytics for selecting and pricing new products. The company did not elaborate further on the extent of its relationship with The Limited.

ARMONK, N.Y. — In-store sales of women’s clothing are expected to see a 9.2% increase in the third quarter of 2012 versus the year-ago period, according to a just-released IBM analytics-based forecast of U.S. retail sales data. The report predicts a 6.2% increase in sales of children’s clothing and a 5.2% increase in footwear. Men’s clothing, however, is forecast to lag, dropping 6.7%.