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Liz Earle maximizes Profit with Nepa’s Pricing Optimization Tools

November 02, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Data-driven decision-making results in £1,200,000 profit increase

Stockholm, Sweden

Nepa, a leading Consumer Science company providing customer experience insights and marketing optimization solutions, has released the results of a data analytics project with skincare manufacturer Liz Earle. Using Nepa’s strategic pricing tool, the skincare company implemented price changes in multiple categories and increased profitability.

“Nepa’s team provided an actionable solution which proved to have a high predictive accuracy. 12 months after implementing price changes in 7 categories, we have increased profit £1,200,000 in the first year. We are very happy with these results that are testament to our focus on the consumer and being a data-driven organization.” Rian Edward, Liz Earle Representative

“Nepa used a Discrete choice experiment approach, enabling us to test thousands of possible pricing configurations. This type of methodology is robust but often requires a combination of historical sales data and experimental choice data to accurately predict future consumer behavior. The Nepa team has great experience with these types of projects.” – Niclas Ohman, Chief Product Officer at Nepa

“These results show Nepa’s dynamic ability to provide clients with a range of actionable solutions powered by our passionate and talented team.” Fredrik Östgren, CEO at Nepa.

Contact Information:

www.nepa.com

Fredrik Östgren

CEO

Maria Skolgata 83 118 53

Stockholm, Sweden

+46 733 345 069

fredrik.ostgren@nepa.com

P-O Westerlund

Deputy CEO, CFO

Maria Skolgata 83 118 53

Stockholm, Sweden

+46 706 404 824

p-o.westerlund@nepa.com

About Nepa

Headquartered in Stockholm and with local presence in Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, London, Mumbai, New York, Miami and Denver, we help some of the world’s most reputable brands in more than 50 countries to optimize customer experience investments and get more effect out of their marketing and sales. Nepa has been awarded DI Gasell’s award for organic fast-growing companies in 6 of 7 years since 2011. The company is publicly traded at the Nasdaq First North Stockholm stock exchange since 2016. Erik Penser Bank is Nepa’s Certified Adviser.

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Why Investing In Fan Insights Is a Smart Play

October 24, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Sports fans are extremely passionate and typically quick to give you their thoughts about a certain player or team. However, many sports teams and organizations do not capitalize on this passion and generosity by asking their supporters about the experience of being a fan. As a result, fan experience suffers and leads to less engagement and profitability.

In recent years, professional athletes have adopted a much more scientific approach to their training and conditioning. To stay competitive, professional sports organizations should do the same with fan insights. Here are the reasons why teams should listen and act on fan experience.

Better Fan Experience, Better Ticket Sales

In the sports world, poor sales performance is often attributed to team performance or the efforts of the sales team. But we know from other industries that the customer experience matters to customer acquisition and retention. Gameday fans have many critical moments of truth with sports brands as they park, buy concessions and much more.

Is every member of the team behind the team contributing to satisfying the fan and optimizing the fan experience? How do you know if everything is going smoothly to ensure that your fans have a great experience that they want to share with others? The answer to these questions will help drive sales through repurchase and recommendation.

Just like a coach reviews game footage, continuous fan experience insights can uncover the real reasons behind poor sales performance. Often, it’s not just the sales executive who fumbled.

Better Fan Experience, Better Gameday Revenue

Fan Experience not only keeps the turnstiles turning – fan engagement also drives spend at the merchandise and concession stands. It’s not surprising that a key factor to minimizing gameday sales are the length of lines – but it’s also a big stadium cost driver to manage the crowds. Fan Insights provide powerful value in assessing where best to allocate those resources and what is the optimal level to capture the most value from attending fans.

Sponsors Love Fan Insights

Professional sports teams are diversifying revenue streams – with some making over 50% of their revenues off the field. Sponsorships are now a major source of club income and the market for sponsors has become increasingly competitive.

Just like any other form of media, sports sponsorships are more valuable when the buyer knows exactly what they’re getting. Adopting principles from other industries, leading sports clubs are adopting insight-based selling methodologies to win more sponsorships and increase the value of existing ones. Check out how Louisville City FC used fan insights to increase the value of their sponsorship assets by over $1M.

Why Aren’t Teams Utilizing Fan Insights?

We’ve helped many clubs that hesitated to invest in a known need for fan insights to overcome these common hurdles:

  • Financial – Sport Insight has been controlled by a small number of expensive firms, so many sports marketers have a wrong perception that fan insights are out of their reach.
  • Priority – Even when traditional resource allocations are providing diminishing returns, some sports marketers are hesitant to invest their staff’s time in understanding fans’ needs.
  • Business Cards – There are a small number of fan insight companies out there (as we mentioned above), and the need for fan insights is often stymied by not knowing where or how to turn.
  • Fear of Knowing – Listening to fans takes courage and opens the door to unpleasant feedback that might upset senior management or ownership.

It’s extremely important to get over these obstacles in an age where expansion teams are shaking up leagues and fans have more ways to engage and interact with teams now than ever before.

Through improved ticket sales, merchandising, gameday revenues, and sponsorship values – an investment in fan experience insights could end up being your most valuable player with the investment paying for itself.

Fan insights are within your reach – Nepa’s Fan Experience Platform, Sports Optimizer, uses proven technology and expert staff to provide actionable and holistic intelligence at a much more reasonable cost. We assist you through every step of the process and help pinpoint areas for FX improvement.

Our veteran consultants can help you deepen understanding of your fanbase and improve renewal rates, optimize gameday revenues and bring in extra sponsorship value. Read a full case study here.

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Dressmann Chooses Nepa for Customer Experience Measurement

October 09, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Holistic CX measurement solution and extensive retail experience leads to another client partnership

Stockholm 

Nepa, a leading Consumer Science company providing customer experience and marketing optimization solutions, has been chosen by Dressmann to provide continuous customer experience insights.

Nepa’s CX Tracker product will collect, analyze and report customer feedback data from 400 Dressmann stores in Sweden, Norway and Finland.

“Nepa’s solution helps deliver the best experiences to our customers in the areas that matter the most by aggregating feedback from thousands of customers across all of our locations. The system gives us better understanding of our customers key demands and helps us make the right priorities to ensure a convenient shopping experience from their perspective.” Knut-Erik Kolberg, Dressmann.

“After a long collaboration with Dressmann on brand development we’re thrilled to add them as a CX partner as well. Fashion retail is one of the many industries driving demand for our Brand and CX solutions. Nepa has specialized CX solutions that help these companies deliver on their financial targets by developing their customer experience.” Fredrik Östgren, CEO at Nepa.

Contact Information:   

www.nepa.com

 

Fredrik Östgren

CEO

Maria Skolgata 83 118 53

Stockholm, Sweden

+46 733 345 069

fredrik.ostgren@nepa.com

 

P-O Westerlund

Deputy CEO, CFO

Maria Skolgata 83 118 53

Stockholm, Sweden

+46 706 404 824

p-o.westerlund@nepa.com

About Nepa

Headquartered in Stockholm, with offices in Norway, Finland, Denmark, UK, USA and India, we help some of the world’s most reputable brands in more than 50 countries to optimize customer experience investments and get more effect out of their marketing and sales. Nepa has been awarded DI Gasell’s award for organic fast-growing companies in 6 of 7 years since 2011 The company is publicly traded at the Nasdaq First North Stockholm stock exchange since 2016. Erik Penser Bank is Nepa’s Certified Adviser.

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Time to Assess your CX Measurement Program?

September 27, 2018

Sam Richardson

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As we post this blog, our industry is celebrating CX Day 2018 and gathering at the Forrester CX Forum in San Francisco. These events will surely cause many CX Professionals to reflect on the value that CX measurement brings to the business – but really, we should always be challenging ourselves to be up to date and provide our companies with CX advantages.

To help you reflect – we’ve listed some questions we pose to CX professionals that approach us weary that they may have outgrown their existing CX measurement programs. These questions will also help those new to CX measurement build a system that will make an immediate impact and be ready for future CX development.

We’ve categorized our questions into 3 areas:

  • Tracking – The pipeline of customer feedback
  • Empowerment – The distribution of CX insight to the business
  • Optimization – The prioritization of CX investments for revenue and profit

Here’s the list:

Tracking

Is CX measurement eroding experience?

Poorly designed CX surveys (i.e. ones that are long, not mobile optimized, or have poor UX) could be doing harm while trying to do good.

Are you validating survey insight?

Customer surveys are a core component to structure customer feedback for reliable insight – but customer, operational, and social media data (to name a few) are necessary to validate survey insight.

Are you getting feedback at the right frequency?

CX programs should be producing a continuous stream of feedback to align with the data rivers that exist in the organization (e.g. sales and operations).

Are you bringing in the right context?

Many CX surveys have focused too heavily on operational touchpoints and lost sight of the overall customer relationship and understanding of the customer’s relationship with your competitors.

Empowerment

Are you empowering employees to improve CX?

79% of CX Professionals surveyed by Forrester state that CX Metrics don’t help employees improve CX.  Successful measurement analytics predict and communicate the  actions that will lead to greatest financial return, not just improvements in KPIs.

Does your program reach everyone it could?

Because of the trend toward operational CX – many programs are focused on service recovery and are missing opportunities to inform strategic planning with senior management, marketing and other groups.

Are you enabling tactical action?

Don’t get us wrong based on the questions above – dashboards and closed loop feedback systems are key components of a CX program. If you’re not using them – you should be. Just don’t stop there.

Are you speaking the right language?

Improving NPS or C-SAT will get the attention of executives and front-line, but when the goal is hit the music stops. Financial metrics are evergreen in business – so you should know and communicate the financial impact of CX.

Optimization

Are you identifying the moments that matter most?

Smart survey design and advanced analytics will help you to identify the moments that drive customer’s experience perceptions.

Do you know how to make customers happy and make money?

A common weakness in CX measurement is that analytic models work in a silo of customer feedback. Analytic models should incorporate sales data to identify the opportunities that improve experience and sales simultaneously.

Are you winning in local markets?

Geo-location and competitor data are increasingly available. CX measurement programs that take advantage of it can tell the business what makes customers pass one store for the next. Understanding these customer “detours” can make or break individual stores.

Can you quantify the financial-value of hello?

By connecting financial performance with customer data on service interactions, you can identify the service standards that are creating value and those that are not.

We hope these questions helped you to reflect on the value of your CX program. In fact, we’d love to hear about your reflections and perhaps help you think through them. Contact us if you’re interested in connecting.

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5 Traits To Strive For in a Brand Health Measurement Program

September 19, 2018

Nepa Brand Tracking Suite

Sam Richardson

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Brands are dynamic entities – never static. Marketing professionals need to nurture them and provide constant attention to support their development and protect them from threats. Marketers must act like parents and maintain responsibility for their brand even when it is owned by consumers out in the “real world.”

Here’s why.

A strong brand can still mean the difference between instant credibility or skepticism. Great brands can command a premium price and rake in higher margins. Brand recognition can open opportunities to new placements and partnerships that propel the brand to new heights.

However, it’s harder than ever to maintain a strong, healthy brand.

Whether a brand is established or emerging, it now exists in an increasingly complex media landscape and competitive environment. We see some mature brands struggle to adapt to the new environment and open the door for many hungry upstart brands to steal market share.

In either case, marketers need to have access to reliable brand intelligence that helps the business act in ways that support growth and development.

Successful brand tracking programs in today’s jungle usually have the following traits:

1. Conscious

Another reality of the day is shorter attention spans. Brand health data must be sourced using the most efficient methods possible – by focusing on what matters most and delivering the most value with the least amount of the consumer’s time. In short, keep your survey short by focusing on what is important.

2. Continuous

Everything moves at a much faster pace today – especially for marketers in the era of programmatic advertising and social media. When every data source is always on, checking in on brand health once a year doesn’t cut it. Brands that continuously measure their brand health can act faster to developments and have an edge over others that do not.

3. Correct

Sample and sample quality may not be the sexiest topic of the day – but it may be the most important. Consumer research data has undergone dramatic shifts as people moved online, then to mobile, and now stay connected in a myriad of ways. Simply put, not all research is reliable and today’s brand tracking champions are relying on panels that follow ESOMAR guidelines to produce reliable data.

4. Connected

Brand health data adds a powerful dimension to help marketers seeking to connect with consumers, but only when its connected in smart ways. For example, Marketing Mix Models that once relied on media spend and sales data to assess short term sales effects of media are now incorporating brand health data to optimize the media mix for long term sales. Brand health measurement and operational business performance data are both better when connected.

5. Compelling

The ultimate success sign of brand health measurement is that it compels the business to take action that helps the brand connect with the right consumers in the right way. It’s not enough to include brand metrics in a dashboard or company town hall. Programs must result in changes to the media mix, overall spend, brand strategy or marketing communications to be a useful tool for the business.

Continuous brand health data that is reliable and connected to other sources will compel the business to act.

If you’re uncertain if your company’s brand health measurement program has these 5 traits – take our brand measurement assessment to find out. This fast and easy assessment takes less than five minutes and will let you know how your program aligns to today’s best practices. Click here to get started.

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The 4 Keys To Mastering Path to Purchase

September 10, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Key #1 – True Omnichannel Understanding

As digital’s presence grew over the past two decades as both a marketing medium and a sales platform, many businesses created digital incubators which later hardened into silos. Meanwhile, physical channels of the same businesses – often representing 90%+ of enterprise sales – powered on with barely a nod to the cross-channel impacts.

This bifurcated view means that the richness of real-world shopping behaviors – which are almost universally omnichannel behaviors – often remain under-appreciated and under-measured. Our research confirms that understanding the interaction between online and offline experiences is critical to mastering the path to purchase, even in businesses that skew heavily to physical points-of-purchase.

To master the omnichannel path to purchase, integrate all online and offline influences and buying points in your analysis.

Key #2 – Touchpoint Conversion Power on the Path to Purchase

There’s no shortage of methodologies and metrics for evaluating marketing and promotional effectiveness. Over time, three factors have driven new variations: (1) Pressure on growth, (2) prove-it-or-lose-it budgeting, and (3) new touchpoints, largely driven by digital channels and the expansion of shopper marketing.

Experts know there’s no perfect analytical approach, just the question of fitness for use. Today, given fitness for use increasingly calls for understanding the conversion power of each touchpoint on the omnichannel path to purchase. Our research across multiple CPG categories has identified that shoppers are exposed to up to 40 different touchpoints as they initiate, research, purchase, use, and review categories, brands, and products.

Today’s business pressures make it essential to understand the conversion power of every touchpoint along the omnichannel path to purchase.

Key #3 – Shoppers, Missions, and the Path to Purchase

Mastering the path to purchase is critical for brands seeking efficient growth from shopper retention and acquisition. Previous posts have touched on two key success criteria:

(1) An omnichannel approach, including all offline and online touchpoints, and (2) Understanding the conversion power of each touchpoint along the path to purchase.

To ensure the insights will result in efficient and business-building outcomes, it’s essential to understand them in the context of specific shopper segments and shopping missions. Our research has identified important variations in how different shopper segments engage with touchpoints, and the impact of those touchpoints on conversion. Similarly, different shopping missions drive different patterns of engagement and impact.

Each shopper segment and mission has its own unique considerations and reactions to touchpoints on the path to purchase

Key #4 – Brand, Retailers, and the Path to Purchase

Many of the touchpoints on the omnichannel path to purchase are shaped by brands, some are shaped by retailers, and some are shaped through collaboration between brands and retailers. (Others are shaped communally, for example, through reviews on social media.)

To optimize touchpoints shaped collaboratively by brands and retailers, use insights which offer the following benefits:

  1. Objectivity
  2. An omnichannel approach
  3. Touchpoint conversion power ratings
  4. Shopper segment- and mission-specific results
  5. Retailer-level insights

With these benefits, you’ll improve planning and results.

Apply objective insights from omnichannel path to purchase analyses to strengthen collaboration, joint business plans, and growth with key retail partners.

This concludes Nepa’s series of posts on the four key points to mastering omnichannel Path to Purchase created for the P2PX Expo in Minneapolis. Our team will be at the event Oct 2-4 and looks forward to connecting (and reconnecting) with you.

Connect with us at P2PX:

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Plantagen, European specialty retailer, announces customer experience partnership with Nepa.

September 04, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Retailers seeking an advantage over local competition turn to Nepa’s Consumer Science Platform

Stockholm 

Nepa, a leading consumer science platform providing customer experience insights and marketing optimization solutions, is pleased to announce a new customer experience engagement with Plantagen.

Nepa was selected to be the specialty plant retailer’s research partner to help facilitate data collection, analysis and delivery of customer experience insights. The program will use Nepa’s Consumer Science Platform to help the company understand CX at store-level and in aggregate to pinpoint areas for improvement in the Swedish market.

“We’re thrilled to help Plantagen grow their CX program using our deep roots and experience providing insights to large retailers with multiple distribution points. We’ll start this project immediately by integrating Plantagen’s customer data into a bespoke solution built by our team that will continuously collect additional CX information, delivered via personalized dashboard to individual stores and the HQ. After the core program is deployed, we hope to connect financial data to give the client even more clarity.” Hanna Wallin Nepa CX Product Owner

“Our growing client-base in Europe and the US is evidence of a growing demand for next generation CX driven tools and consulting. Our team is working to meet the needs of our increased client base and further improving our offerings.” Fredrik Östgren Nepa CEO

www.nepa.com

Fredrik Östgren
CEO
Maria Skolgata 83 118 53
Stockholm, Sweden
+46 733 345 069 fredrik.ostgren@nepa.com

P-O Westerlund
Deputy CEO, CFO
Maria Skolgata 83 118 53
Stockholm, Sweden+46 706 404 824 p-o.westerlund@nepa.com

About Nepa

Headquartered in Stockholm and with local presence in Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, London, Mumbai, New York, Miami and Denver, we help some of the world’s most reputable brands in more than 50 countries to optimize customer experience investments and get more effect out of their marketing and sales. Nepa has been awarded DI Gasell’s award for organic fast-growing companies in 6 of 7 years since 2011 The company is publicly traded at the Nasdaq First North Stockholm stock exchange since 2016. Erik Penser Bank is Nepa’s Certified Adviser.

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Nepa Expands: Signs U.S. Based Industry Veteran to Lead Charge

August 22, 2018

Sam Richardson

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New York, NY

Nepa, a leading Consumer Science company providing customer experience insights and marketing optimization solutions, confirms its commitment to global sports clubs by appointing Steve Livingstone as practice lead. Steve will utilize Nepa capabilities to help professional sports teams and leagues to increase their bottom lines.

Based in the United States, Steve brings over 25 years’ experience working with some of the world’s leading sports organizations such as the National Football League, U.S. Soccer Federation and Copa America to Nepa.

“Sports franchises and leagues need to find new ways to connect with their paying fans and the cities they play in,” said Ken Peterson, Managing Director, Nepa US. “Steve brings over two decades of first-hand experience optimizing the business side of sports. His industry knowledge will help tailor our Consumer Science Platform to our roster of professional sports clients.”

Nepa CEO Fredrik Östgren, added: “We’re excited to bring Steve’s leadership to apply our unique combination of consumer research and data science to help professional sports clients improve business outcomes and deliver great experiences to sports fans everywhere.”

“As a Nepa client, I saw firsthand how the company’s expertise made my teams successful. I’m eager to come onboard to focus on helping other forward-thinking teams and leagues do the same. Building on the momentum Nepa created by working with so many great brands, there is no doubt we are going to be a force in a market estimated to be worth $80 billion in North America by 2019. I’m excited to be joining this great team, and ready to help grow Nepa’s Global Sports division.” said Steve Livingstone.

Over his career, Livingstone has worked in all areas of professional sports on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of the world’s leading sports brands and organizations including the National Football League (NFL), Jacksonville Jaguars, United States Soccer Federation, Scottish Football Association, Scottish Rugby Union, North American Soccer League, United Soccer League and Copa America have benefited from his expertise.

Contact Information:

www.nepa.com

Fredrik Östgren
CEO
Maria Skolgata 83 118 53
Stockholm, Sweden
+46 733 345 069 fredrik.ostgren@nepa.com

P-O Westerlund
Deputy CEO, CFO
Maria Skolgata 83 118 53
Stockholm, Sweden+46 706 404 824 p-o.westerlund@nepa.com

About Nepa

Headquartered in Stockholm and with local presence in Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, London, Mumbai, New York, Miami and Denver, we help some of the world’s most reputable brands in more than 50 countries to optimize customer experience investments and get more effect out of their marketing and sales. Nepa has been awarded DI Gasell’s award for organic fast-growing companies in 6 of 7 years since 2011. The company is publicly traded at the Nasdaq First North Stockholm stock exchange since 2016. Erik Penser Bank is Nepa’s Certified Adviser.

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Awesomeness in Omnichannel |  Summer 2018

August 21, 2018

Sam Richardson

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As consumers become more connected, some companies are embracing Omnichannel better than others and reshaping the way we do business. Here’s Nepa’s summer round up of our favorite Onmichannel examples in the marketplace.

Domino’s Heats Up Summer With “HotSpots”

What’s better than pressing a few buttons and having a fresh pizza show up at your door? Having it show up this summer at 200,000 parks, sports fields and beaches that don’t have a traditional address. Domino’s has extended it’s “Hotspots” program and the company even polled users to suggest delivery spots.

Domino’s continues to prioritize investments in their Omnichannel strategy leveraging technology and mobile features to enhance convenience for customers. In fact, they began to focus on online/mobile ordering long before Uber Eats, Grubhub and Seamless became ubiquitous. The techy pizza company launched “The Pizza Tracker” 10 years ago!

Whole Foods Omnichannel Prime Day Play

After being acquired by Amazon, many in the retail industry have been watching to see how the 800lb gorilla would weave Whole Foods into their Omnichannel strategy. Well, Prime Day gave some us hints. Here’s what they offered.

Prime members who spent $10 in stores from July 11-17 received $10 in Amazon credit usable on Prime Day. Shoppers were eligible once they downloaded the Whole Foods app and connected their Amazon accounts. To sweeten the deal, they also offered shoppers who used their Amazon Visa Card in stores from July 14-1710% back on up to a total purchase of $400, double the usual reward.

To drive awareness they used everything they had: Outdoor and indoor banners, stanchion signs and ceiling signs promoted the sale in stores. Whole Foods supported the event with a banner ads on wholefoodsmarket.com, email blasts, and Facebook and Twitter updates. The retailer also invested in radio spots and sponsored Facebook ads.

Need more Omnichannel? Amazon also used the occasion to encourage trial of delivery from Whole Foods via the Prime Now service. Shoppers who made their first grocery delivery purchase from July 3-17 received $10 off their order and a $10 credit for a future order. Well played.

Honorable Mentions

Other major retailers such as Walmart, Kohls and Target deserve an honorable mention for firing a shot across Amazon’s bow by launching their own aggressive sales promotions during Prime Day. Many of them such as Target flexed new customer centric strategies of their own such as their “Drive up” click-and-collect program.

Kindred Group Goes All In on The World Cup

How does the one of the largest gambling businesses capitalize on the biggest global sporting event? By going fully Onmichannel.

Our brand tracking client Kindred Group parent company to well known brands like Unibet and Red32 catered to players in over 100 countries using their mobile app, online platforms and licensing agreements at physical locations. By investing heavily in online and offline content focused on teaching new players how to place better bets, they were able to engage with their target of single young males. A total of 1.55 million Kindred players were classed as active in the three months to June 30, up 32% from 1.17 million in the same period last year. Sounds like a win to us.

We hope you had a fantastic Summer. Come back in the Fall for our next seasonal roundup of “Awesomeness In Onmichannel.” We can chat about Omnichannel all day, contact our team here.

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How to Embrace the Retail Revolution

August 02, 2018

Sam Richardson

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Dramatic changes in technology and shopper expectations are fueling a revolution in the retail industry. Retailers that embrace the change and meet today’s omnichannel demands will emerge victorious. Matt Nitzberg, Nepa’s Chief Client Officer, recently opened the Retail Revolution Summit at the Shopper Insights & Retail Activation conference with 10 changes that are redefining the new retail world.

This post introduces a few of those concepts and some strategies to win the Retail Revolution. If you want the full list – check out Matt’s 12-minute webinar.

Unlimited Choices

Shoppers have unlimited choice readily available at their fingertips – both digitally and physically. This can be a challenge for retailers that have relied on reducing assortment complexity as a strategy. As new brands emerge to meet a diverse range of consumer needs – be it an eco-conscious toothpaste or convenient men’s razor subscription – retailers must never give a product-based reason for the shopper to choose another retailer. A great example of this is Target’s decision to subscription-based Harry’s Razors, which helped them to compete strongly on Amazon’s Prime Day.

More Choices, Less Store Space

Despite the need to offer more products to win and maintain shoppers, the old retail mentality of “more stores, more sales” is no longer an effective strategy. Today, having “more stores” is a possible indication of more overhead that risks distracting a retailer from the omnichannel priorities of shoppers. As we forge into the retail revolution, it is better to think about the role of the physical store in the total customer experience than merely the number of stores.

Effortless Shopping

The days of increasing basket size by leading shoppers on a treasure hunt through the store are numbered. The new reality is a demand for effortless shopping experiences – where retailers make it convenient for shoppers to get what they desire, when and where they want it. This change is fueling another change that Matt introduces, from “going to the store” to “the store comes to me”. Delivery services like Instacart, meal subscriptions like Blue Apron, and the rise of small format stores are proof of the effortless shopping trend.

How Can Retailers Grow amidst the Revolution?

As you consider these trends, Amazon will surely come to mind as both a source and benefactor of these seismic shifts. Their share of total US retail sales has increased from ~1.5% to over 5% today. The time is now for retailers to start adopting new techniques to compete with Amazon’s impressive growth – here are some useful strategies:

Accept the Omnishopper Reality

Headlines about eCommerce eliminating traditional brick and mortar retail have been replaced with eCommerce-players expanding their physical presence (e.g. Amazon and Warby Parker opening stores, Casper opening showrooms and partnering with major retailers). The Retail revolution will reward companies that adapt the role of physical and digital channels to provide shoppers with more choice and frictionless shopping experiences.

Master the complex Path to Purchase

Shoppers are not only buying in multiple channels – our research confirms they are moving seamlessly between physical and digital interactions as they research and compare brands and products. According to Nepa UK’s Managing Director Lindsay Cowan, “Marketers that connect these dots across online and offline touchpoints will influence action at different stages of the shoppers’ journey – allowing them to invest more effectively to attract new shoppers, get on the shopping list, optimize conversion and increase penetration.” For more on how to succeed in this “New Era of Shopping” – check out our Q&A with Lindsay.

Optimize CX for Revenue & Profit

While companies have appropriately pursued Customer Experience strategies to create loyalty in advocacy, there has been too much focus on improving intermediate metrics like NPS or C-SAT. Tracking these metrics and driving them upward is important, but leading brands are now collecting CX feedback on a continuous basis and aligning it to operational data to prioritize investments that improve the customer experience and the bottom-line.

Make no mistake – Retail is in the middle of dramatic changes due to technological disruptions and shopper expectations. Companies that fully embrace the drivers of this revolution can adapt and make the investments needed to thrive.

At Nepa, we take an omnishopper view that blends “why” and “what” research competencies to help clients embrace this new reality, master the path to purchase, and improve ROI on CX investments. Click here to contact us.