Consumer Analytics

Pittsburgh – GNC Holdings Inc. will use customer-centricity solutions from dunnhumbyUSA across all facets of its marketing to more effectively segment and engage with in-store and online customers. This will include personalized communications and offers to shoppers through both online and offline channels.

Bedford, Mass. – Daily mobile/online retail revenues surge an average of 55% on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving), but a corresponding surge in attacks drives hard losses, on average, as much as $500,000 per hour or $8,000 per minute. In addition, a new study of 1,100 U.S., and U.K., retail IT staffers from RSA and the Ponemon Institute shows that 66% of respondents expect that disruption would result in customer churn that would damage reputation and brand and could push losses as high as $3.4 million from a single hour of disruption.

Salt Lake City -- Consumers value salesperson expertise above all else, but they often find such expertise lacking, according to eXperticity’s first-ever Retail Buying Experience survey. The study found a striking expertise gap among sales associates in five retail areas: outdoor, sporting goods, hunting or fishing, health and nutrition, and prestige beauty.

 When asked to rate which services consumers most desire and value from retail sales associates, the top four were:

1. Product knowledge (73%);

Real time retail is the best way to describe an intriguing new shopper engagement platform from Bazaarvoice that allows brands to respond to questions and reviews about their products directly on retail sites within the Bazaarvoice network.

Caty, N.C. – Consumers have somewhat contradictory desires for greater data privacy and for businesses to have detailed insight into their personal needs, and also have seen improvement in how businesses use personal data. According to a new study from analytics technology provider SAS, 71% of 1,260 respondents surveyed said that recent news about government access to personal data increased their privacy concerns.

Ann Arbor, Mich. -- Consumer confidence in October fell to a 10-month low, according to the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index. Industry experts said the drop showed that even the reopening of the federal government was not enough to reassure nervous consumers.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan final consumer sentiment index decreased to 73.2, the weakest this year, down from 77.5 in September.

More Marketing News

New York -- Putting social media functions entirely within control of marketing and communications is a mistake, according to a new study conducted by Tata Consultancy Services, a leading IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, of over 60. Forty-five percent of respondents in North America said marketing controls social media, but most companies aren’t satisfied with this structure.

Competition from digital entertainment providers may be on the rise, but with an installed base of 43,600 locations, rental activity at Redbox hit a new high in the third quarter and generated traffic for retail partners in the process.