National Retail Federation (NRF) represents the world’s largest retail trade association including members of department store, catalog, Internet, chain restaurants etc. Its members range from the business providing goods and services to retailers. NRF 2015, their annual trade show is an amazing place to capture insights that can dominate the forthcoming year of retail.
It’s expected that the year 2015 will have behavior analytics playing a lead role in three major vogues which includes:; the stores back in trends, the complete customer experience and back to the basics of Action Metrics .The year 2014 saw 5 trends in Behavior Analytics that changed the face of analytics. They included Footfall Traffic in Mainstream Retail, where 23% of retailers gave priority to customer traffic. The trends also included in store Analytics which is considered as the platform facilitating promotions of their own products such as that of Shopper Track, Retail Next etc. Then slowly evolved the trend of Queue Management where effort was made to lower the average waiting time, and this strategy is implemented in ASDA/Wal-Mart and also in supermarkets.
While for the year 2015, retailers focused on exaggerating its benefits through effective operational management. The motivating themes included the trend of retail stores gaining power as customer prefer physical exposure while choosing products more than the online purchasing as a result Amazon and Zippos opened their first physical stores in 2014.
Another is the trend of retailers upgrading their Information Systems and putting in massive investments in Data Management, Supply Chain, and Customer Relationship Systems. The other mostly accepted trend is the fact that retailer are pursuing steps to bridge the gap of online and offline worlds. While action metrics focuses on measuring activities that requires response. In 2015 it’s predicted that the bricks and mortar store will regain its place with the behavior analytics playing a key role.
