For retailers considering life after fraud liability shifts onto their shoulders, coins may drop back into their coffers as everything from loyalty to geofencing allows for more interaction and possibly greater affinity with a store’s customers.
Chris Boebel, IT director for Delta Sonic Car Wash, Buffalo, N.Y., with 30 locations in New York and Illinois, is developing a consumer-focused mobile strategy that involves an app, beacons and geofencing.
“As we move from a card-based discounting program to mobile, we’ll know some things about our customers. We can tell them what their car-wash price is going to be and alert them to their discounts,” Boebel says. “It’s all about data—market-basket data, surveys. It helps us market more effectively.”
With geofencing, Boebel hopes to lure customers driving by with more discounts, especially at off-peak times. “Our owner compares our car washes to the airlines,” he says. “The airlines are paying to fly the plane whether or not there are people in the seats. So if the car wash is open, we want to get as many people moving through it at all times.”
As retailers assess their mobile strategies, attention will eventually fall on integration and how existing IT infrastructures will evolve to accommodate new technologies.
Drew Mize, COO of Arlington, Texas-based The Pinnacle Corp., says the key is optimizing data delivery. Typically, a retailer’s automation technology supplier is best positioned to provide mobile solutions. “There are app developers serving our space, but they don’t know our business,” he says.
A Natural Resource
Boebel’s focus on data is on par with William McKnight’s vision of a “big data” future. McKnight, president of McKnight Consulting Group, Plano, Texas, says data is the world’s next natural resource, like oil, water or sunlight.
With parking spaces, garbage cans, cars, watches, clothes and even our own bodies potentially having sensors to track just about everything, data may prove to be the raw material needed to reinvent commerce, health care and all things manufactured and consumed.
Some of his thoughts on retail:
- Real time: Gone are the batch days. Companies with monthly uploads are moving to weekly, weekly to daily, daily to hourly, hourly to real time.
- Dynamic pricing: Retailers will be able to adjust pricing based on trending sales to maximize goals, be they margin or volume.
- Inventory optimization: Retailers can have more of what’s in demand in stock, and less inventory that just sits.
- Digital couponing: Data can help retailers offer more relevant discounts as a way of growing affinity, traffic or market basket.
- Selling data: Retailers can make money off selling raw data to information companies who analyze the numbers and provide crucial results.
- Self-serve reporting: In time, key individuals within the company will have access to data to populate their own measuring tools.
Customer-affinity information can come from combining data from third parties, McKnight says, a process he called “triangulation.” Retailers don’t have to analyze their store data in a vacuum. Information such as the kinds of magazines a customer buys or the search words he or she uses derived from third parties can let a retailer develop even more relevant coupon or loyalty offers.
Once refined, raw data can help retailers stock hot items, offer tantalizing incentives and bring people into the store. Understanding and acting on those opportunities may be the next gold rush.
How banks describe their innovation levels
| Conservative and struggling to adjust | 37% |
| Conservative but leaders pushing for innovation | 24% |
| Innovative | 18% |
| Conservative; aware with a solid innovation process | 13% |
| Complexity of industry makes it hard to innovate | 5% |
| Innovation not a top priority because business is good | 3% |
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