Because analytics can be applied throughout many industries, Buxton has decided to combine our blogs into one. We are beginning the transition to our Buxton Analytics Blog today, June 30,2009. If you are subscribed via email we will be subscribing you to the new blog. If you are not subscribed via email, please visit http://buxtonanalytics.buxtonco.com to subscribe via the RSS feed.
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I read an article posted in the IFA Smartbrief newsletter about how fast food companies are doing really well in the current economy. Out of all the reasons that they listed for this, one stood out in my mind. “Location is vital for success.” If you have a location where you don’t have any customers, your store will not be successful. Whether you are a franchisee or not, it is essential that you choose a good site. Some franchisors will help their franchisees with this, while other people use analytics firms like Buxton to study their customers and identify opportunities in specific markets for growth. Don’t risk picking a poor location, make sure you do it with sophisticated and accurate analysis.
I can remember my grandparents telling me stories of their childhood during the Great Depression. They grew up on a farm in southeast Missouri, and food, not to mention money, was scarce. Many of their stories involved running barefoot all summer, only to get a new pair of shoes every fall to go to school. Even in the 1930’s, the Back-To-School season could spur spending.
With the current economic conditions, everyone’s looking for signs of recovery and growth. “When will things get back to ‘normal’?” is a question on everyone’s mind. An upcoming litmus test is likely the Back-to-School season. It seems that consumers are buying out of necessity these days, but in many cases parents will buy for their children before they will buy for themselves.
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This Back-to-School season may hit at the optimal time during which consumers are feeling a little more comfortable in their financial futures. It may also show that if a family has resources above and beyond the day-to-day necessities, they will use them for their children. As school begins, children are more likely to actually need items as well. They’re growing, and their clothes from last year don’t fit anymore. They need a new backpack because the old one is worn after being carried for a year. And, they must have new school supplies.
Recent retail sales numbers have been bleak, with consumers showing severe cutbacks on their spending since last October. There have been many comparisons of our current economic situation to the one of the Great Depression. The numbers do seem to be stabilizing though. Perhaps this Back-To-School season will provide a metric for what the new “normal” will be in terms of retail sales, giving those consumers an excellent motivation to begin spending again.
Companies today are facing ever tougher challenges of stretching their marketing dollars. In my opinion prudent companies continue to invest in themselves through their marketing campaigns which often originate from fragmented data sources. Someone was once quoted, “Nothing happens until something is sold.”
In the retail world, I view marketing as equivalent to R&D for the manufacturing world. Cut off your marketing or R&D budget and you cut off your future.
So, assuming you want to stay in business, how do you need to spend your finite and possibly shrinking marketing budget? Current and up to date information is vital! You must know your customer. You must entice your customer, including the ones who don’t know that they are your customer yet, to use your products and/or services instead of your competitors. Therefore, you must reach your customer. You should be in his or her mind long before they know that they want or need your offering!
In today’s ever changing technological world there are multiple ways to reach your customers. You may choose web, email, snail mail or telemarketing campaigns. Each of these methods contains one common, but almost assuredly, fragmented thread… data.
Data should be viewed as an asset. But how do we use it? Most systems are independent of each other, including a retail point of sale system. You have a plethora of data at your disposal if and only if each of your systems talks to one another or you build a data warehouse.
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Like many consumers, I run the gamut from shopping at high-end department stores to bargain-basement discounters. I’ll shop wherever I think I’ll get the best deal on what I need at the time. This past weekend, I went on one of my shopping trips, deciding to first hit an off-price retailer that specializes in discount apparel. What I saw in the parking lot was truly a sign of the times. In this off-price retailer’s parking lot were rows and rows of high-end foreign import cars . . . Lexus, Mercedes, BMW . . .
A year ago, these makes of car would be the exception rather than the rule in this parking lot. My point is, the current economic environment is changing the customer base for a significant number of retailers. Affluent consumers may be trading down for some purchases, and other middle-income consumers may be looking for even bigger bargains. These changes in buying behaviors are impacting retailers across the board by changing who their customer base is. These customers that are changing their buying behaviors likely have different lifestyles and needs, and respond to different in-store and out-of-store marketing offers than the historic customer base for these retailers.
Have you noticed that the parking lots at your stores look different these days? If you have, it may be time to better understand who your customer is. If you have a profile for your customers that is more than a year old, or if you’ve never invested in understanding who your customer is, now is a great time to do so. A comprehensive look at your customers can help you meet your entire customer base’s needs and expectations now and hopefully hold on to these new customers when the economy turns around.
Well, that depends on how you shop?
While it’s granted that Wal-Mart www.walmart.com, is the low price leader, if you shop with coupons on “in-store” specials then you can really save a lot of money.
I can personally attest to this. My wife is using a new shopping technique that pairs coupons, which can be doubled or tripled, with in-store specials and has cut our weekly grocery bill down by an average of 59%!!! So you may ask, what is the secret?
It’s a website called the Grocery Game, www.thegrocerygame.com. This website monitors local grocery ads and can match up the coupon circulars in the Sunday paper with local grocers and lets you know what is a great deal….or what is basically free.
You pay a small fee to see what grocers have what items on sale. This website matches up past coupons with these weekly sale items and flags them as either:
Some items that we have got completely free include rice cakes, bread buns, paper plates, and hand soap. While Wal-Mart does not double or triple coupons, other grocers do and this is where the majority of the savings come into play. So if you have the time to shop at two different stores instead of one, this could be a good way to save on a tight budget.
Scott Place is a Senior GIS Analyst at Buxton.
With an estimated 40 million people moving throughout the U.S. every year (9 million of which do not leave a forwarding address), 1 in 100 getting married, and 1 in 200 getting divorced, having customer information that is verified and current is more important than ever. This means that for all of company “X’s” time and money spent on name and address collection, this data could be completely obsolete within 12 months. These changes also reflect potential lifestyle and buying habit changes within an existing customer base. Try building an effective campaign management solution with outdated data? Sending a “house file” out to be cleaned periodically is not good enough either. Your data must be integrated across the entire organization for maximum effectiveness.
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Last week Buxton presented a webcast titled, “Unlock Opportunities for Your Retail Stores in Today’s Market - Make Customers the Center of Your Organization’s Strategy.” During the webcast, viewers gained an understanding of:
Implementing strategies to efficiently and effectively increase performance of existing locations
Developing a customer-centric site selection strategy to open home run locations
Optimizing merchandise mix for each location based on customers around specific stores
Reaching your most valuable customers for retention, reactivating existing customers and marketing to customers who are most likely to buy from you
To view a recording of the webcast, visit http://www.xtalks.com/xto338buxton.ashx
Everyone is feeling the pinch of the economic slump. With more job layoffs everyday and gas prices enviably only getting higher for the summer; consumers are rethinking about spending that extra money on going out to eat. With fast food restaurants offering more $1 menu deals, what are other restaurants trying to do to keep you coming in!?
If you do decide to dine out and don’t want fast food, make sure you check out the deals that sit-down restaurant are trying to lure you in with for some fabulous meal deals. TGI Friday’s is offering “Top Ten” for $9.99, PF Chang’s has “Chang’s for Two” at $39.95, which includes a full four course meal and yes, even Morton’s Steak House is offering Dinner for 2 for $99.99.
Restaurants are realizing that people just want more for their buck and it looks like that is what we are getting. Here are some other great deals:
TGI Fridays - $5 Sandwiches & Salads
Applebee’s $20 deal- 2 full meals & sharable appetizer
Dave & Busters – Eat & play combo for $15.99
Texas Road House – “Early Dine” for $7.99 (Monday-Thursday before 6 & Sat before 3)
Outback steakhouse – 15 meals for under $15 bucks
Carino’s Italian - “Two Can Lunch” for $12.99 & “Two Can Dine” for $19.99
Chili’s – 10 for under $7
On the Boarder – Pick two Mexican favorites, plus rice & beans for $6.99
*Offers are continuously changing. Please check the web page before heading out!
Nadine is a Senior GIS Analyst at Buxton.
