MARKET WATCH
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Ten Leading Retailers Join VideoMining’s C-Store Panel
VideoMining Corporation, the leading provider of in-store intelligence for retailers and consumer product manufacturers, announced the names of ten convenience store retailers joining the fourth wave of its flagship syndicated program, C-Store Shopper Insights (CSI). The retailers are: Circle K, AM/PM (BP), Chevron, Hess, RaceTrac, Cumberland Farms, Thornton’s, Maverik, Holiday, and GetGo (Giant Eagle).
As part of the CSI program, VideoMining will deploy it’s breakthrough in-store measurement and analytics technology in a carefully selected national panel of 144 stores in cooperation with the participating retailers.
The goal of the ongoing CSI program is to develop an in-depth understanding of the shopping process in convenience stores and uncover innovative opportunities to improve performance. It will create a large behavioral data set from over 10 million convenience store trips and integrate it with a number of other data sources to provide unprecedented visibility into the path-to-purchase of C-store shoppers and factors that impact their purchase decisions.
“We are delighted to partner with some of the most innovative convenience store retailers and manufacturers,” said Dr. Rajeev Sharma, Founder and CEO of VideoMining. “We are continually evolving the program to capture the most relevant shopper data and to derive the most actionable insights.”
Besides offering an extensive list of “deep dive” syndicated reports for all product categories, the program will offer an opportunity for ongoing custom testing, research and trend analysis.
“This year’s program involves a massive data set from the expanded store panel, but also addresses a number of special topics such as Food Service, Hispanic Shoppers, Holiday Analysis and Forecourt Productivity,” said Priya Baboo, President of Shopper Insights for VideoMining.
VideoMining also recently launched a similar program for the grocery industry called Center Store MegaStudy where over 10 million shopping trips from leading supermarket banners will be analyzed for in-depth shopper insights.
Inmar Services Unaffected by AWS Outages That Grounded Sites
The Digital Promotion Network from Inmar did not miss a transaction during the recent Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage in the Northeast that brought down major sites. Its digital coupon-enabling technology has stood strong through five AWS outages since its deployment in 2009.
While the outages are causing some to question the stability of the public cloud, Inmar vice president of Architecture Mike Kavis said, “Outages happen, and data centers fail both in the cloud and on-premises.” He maintained that it is up to technology designers to design for “uptime” based on the level of risk, priorities and investment appropriate for that business.
“Sites without Service Level Agreements to meet may rightly focus on scaling to millions of concurrent users and risk going down for an hour or two versus planning for the rare AWS outage,” said Kavis. “On the other hand, a company like Inmar must invest heavily in disaster recovery because its retail clients expect every shopper’s transaction to work flawlessly.”
Kavis said Inmar architects expect every server and every service in our platform to fail at some point and they design for ways to continue to process transactions on redundant computer resources in multiple zones.
Patent Granted to Incentive Targeting
Incentive Targeting has been granted a patent for its unique shopper targeting user interface. The patent for the software is titled “Computer-Implemented Method and System for Conducting a Search of Electronically Stored Information.”
The company, located in Cambridge, Mass., provides a web-based system for retailers and consumer product marketers to create, manage, and measure behaviorally-targeted promotions. Through its software, Incentive Targeting enables targeted, pay-for-success marketing and real-time analytics across hundreds of stores and millions of shoppers
Shoppers Review Stores While in Store
Retailers need to prepare for mobile and social media engagement as higher than expected amounts of shoppers are reading and writing mobile reviews, comparing prices and scanning QR codes. That is one of the research findings from a survey of more than 6,500 U.S. consumers by Empathica, a provider of Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions.
The findings show that mobile and social customer experience strategies are becoming more important than ever for brands with retail consumers using these channels to make decisions - even while in-store. In fact, one in 10 smartphone owners have written a review on a website or social media platform while in-store.
Survey results also revealed that the use of mobile technology has become commonplace during shopping and dining experiences. At least half of consumers with smartphones have looked for reviews about a retailer during a visit - as well as 10% of consumers who don’t even own a smartphone.
Price comparisons continue to be the most frequent in-store mobile action with 55% percent of smartphone owners reporting that they have used their devices to check prices while shopping. Other popular mobile actions include scanning a QR code (34%) and writing a review (9%).
“Today’s consumers routinely perform a variety of in-store activities on smartphones and mobile devices,” said Dr. Gary Edwards, chief customer officer, Empathica. “Whether it’s comparing prices or scanning a QR code for a discount, brands that ignore the use of mobile technology in customer and guest experiences will miss key opportunities to connect with a large pool of potential brand advocates.”
Customer Rewards Programs Make Cents
It is vital for retailers to differentiate themselves and increase shopper frequency. To do so, more retailers are implementing loyalty programs, says TCC Global, a worldwide firm offering such programs. Global retailers continue to use loyalty schemes such as points and voucher collection campaigns in an effort to increase customer traffic, build brand retention and expand their market share.
“Schemes such as voucher collection or earning points for rewards are more effective than using price alone, if only because they are addictive and ultimately deliver something of real value to consumers,” says Neil Saunders, managing director at London-based retail research agency Conlumino.
According to U.K.-based food and grocery retailing and supply chain analyst IGD, the American grocery market grew as a whole by 4.1% between 2010 and 2011, and this growth is predicted to continue in 2012 with a projected 4.3% marginal increase. Due to the success of customer loyalty campaigns - increasing shopper frequency, brand loyalty and spend - these programs are on target to help support growth in the grocery sector in the coming year.
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