If You Don’t Know Your Data, You Don’t Know Your Stores
October 31, 2023 by Jamie Banks – Our team at GSP attended the NACS Show, the convenience store industry’s largest convention, and we brought home a lot of observations and ideas. The event featured panel discussions from industry leaders on the issues that face retailers.
It was remarkable how many of these sessions segued into serious conversations about store data and surveys. If I boil it down to one statement, it’s “If you don’t know your data, you don’t know your stores.”
Smart retailers use data to make key decisions that enhance the overall shopping experience for customers. The data needs to support different categories and doesn’t help with making these key decisions when it’s kept in silos. AccuStore’s cloud-based platform helps define these critical attributes for store-level growth strategies. It serves as a “single-source of truth” for retail sites, revealing key insights that power the in-store execution of marketing campaigns, product rollouts and store renewal projects.
Let’s review some of the common categories our clients use in their AccuStore profiles:
- Store Layout & Size: The size and layout of the store affects shopping experience and inventory.
- Products & Vrands: This helps in understanding the store’s niche, target market, and pricing strategies.
- Sales, Revenue & Margins: Evaluate the store’s financial health and identify areas for improvement.
- Promotions: Assess advertising and marketing efforts, including POP, social media, email and other promotions.
- Customer Behavior: Loyalty programs, repeat customer rates, and customer feedback provide insights into how well the store is retains and satisfies its customer base.
- Employee Metrics: Turnover, customer service quality, and store hours to optimize operations.
- Performance Variance: Seasons, holidays, and special events to plan inventory and marketing strategies.
- Feedback & Reviews: Collecting and analyzing customer feedback, reviews, and ratings provide insights into customer satisfaction and areas needing improvement.
These are the only categories of data we see used in AccuStore. Most user will also have their own “in-house” metrics that can be configured into the platform. And while some of these categories listed above may lead one to believe that AccuStore is a promotion-driven product, the store-specific data forms a base of communications among marketing staff, store managers, and operations, powering day-to-day tasks.
Let us know if you’ve got questions about your data. We’d love to help you figure out how to make the best use of it.
