Specialty Retail Industry Overview
Although the rising disposable income and changing lifestyle of consumers have boosted demand throughout the retail sector, small specialty retail stores are facing increasing competition from top specialty retailers, e-commerce and department stores. In addition, rising need for personalization, increasing costs of raw materials, and loss of profitable customers are making it difficult for companies in the specialty retail industry to gain a competitive advantage. As such, companies in the specialty retail industry are seeking growth overseas, narrowing focus on the core business, and introducing own store-branded products.
Business Challenge
The client is a specialty store based out of the United States.
As consumers were increasingly turning to online shopping, the client wanted to move to an omnichannel model of business. Before investing a huge sum into their new business model, they wanted to gather detailed insights into their customers, understand reasons for customer churn, revamp supply chain structure, and devise targeted marketing approaches. They approached the experts at Infiniti Research to leverage their expertise in offering market intelligence solutions.
By leveraging Infiniti’s market intelligence solution, the specialty retail industry client also wanted to:
Specialty retail industry challenge #1: Focus into product and service personalization
By analyzing their customers’ purchasing history, feedback, and preferences across different touchpoints, the specialty retail industry client wanted to devise personalized strategies for them.
Specialty retail industry challenge #2: Enhance customer experience both in-store and on online platforms
By identifying issues faced by customers both in-store and on online platforms, the client wanted to identify best practices to reduce customer attrition. Besides, with Infiniti’s market intelligence solution, the specialty retail industry client wanted to identify the factors that improve customer loyalty and evaluate the impact of marketing strategies.
Specialty retail industry challenge #3: Revamp supply chain structures
As constant conditions of stock-outs and overstocks were increasing inventory costs for the company, they wanted to formulate effective supply chain management strategies and reduce inventory costs.
Our Approach
The experts at Infiniti Research followed a three-phased approach that involved:
Customer intelligence study to analyze the target customer segments. The factors such as customers’ needs, preferences, and satisfaction level were analyzed.
Market scanning and monitoring analysis to identify factors impacting the product demand and evaluate industry developments. This phase of the engagement also involved identifying cost-effective technologies and tools to map the customer journey across different touchpoints.
Inventory management solution to forecast product demands in advance and plan supply chain activities.
Results Obtained
The insights obtained from Infiniti’s market intelligence engagement helped the specialty retail industry client to analyze customers’ needs and demands and revamp marketing approaches accordingly. By identifying the reasons for customer churn, they were able to focus more into those areas and identify best practices to reduce customer attrition. Additionally, the client was able to revamp their traditional supply chain model and reduce inventory costs.
By identifying issues faced by customers both in-store and on online platforms, the specialty retail industry client was able to adopt strategies to minimize their impact. Besides, they implemented dynamic pricing strategy and regulated the competition by preventing the loss of customers and market share to their competitors. Moreover, the new business model helped the client to capture greater value from customers and increase sales by 39%, within eight months.
