What’s In-Store for 2012

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At PRI, we do not pretend to know and see all, but we have spotted several noteworthy developments that have been building for a while and represent significant business opportunities. 2012 holds many promises in terms of retail innovation. Smart phones, mobile POS, experimental devices, and digital signs quickly come to mind.
 
As retailers leverage these technologies into their stores, the challenge of presenting a uniform, cross-channel message experience becomes exceedingly complex. Add to this equation all of the data that retailers collect and achieving an integrated in-store marketing approach presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
 
The themes we see presenting themselves to address this in 2012 are: - Business Analytics. - Marketing Metrics.
 
Business analytics enable a retailer to understand and predict customer behaviour. Data mining results in segmentation and analysis, against which multi-channel campaigns are executed and measured. Although not frequently linked with analytics and metrics, we are also of the view that content must be a part of the equation.
 
We use the term Digital Marketing Systems to describe the end-to-end platform that embodies: - Behavioral merchandising (powered by business analytics). - Automated content management and generation. - Return on promotion.
 
Behavioral merchandising embodies business analytics that result in understanding, predicting, and influencing consumer purchase behavior instore by messages delivered via a digital communication network. The objective of behavioral merchandising is to stimulate the consumer buying process by mass customization of targeted messages. At its core, behavioural merchandising advocates that by providing consumers with meaningful store, product, and service information, customer trust and loyalty can be increased.
 
Automated content management refers to content that is created based upon directions received from business analytics. It encompasses the systems and processes to create, manage, optimize and distribute content on a cost effective, timely basis in response to instructional sets received from the behavioural merchandising process. Automated content management drives down production costs, dramatically reduces production time, and greatly expands the ability to “mass customize” high quality digital messages system wide.
 
Return on promotion is an advanced set of digital message performance metrics. Traffic, conversion rates, and results (POS data or inventory movement, for example), are monitored in response to in-store promotions. ROP provides the promoting firm with feedback on the impact of its displayed content. This information enables the brand to determine its return on investment, and continue to fine tune its content strategy. The network operation, in response to this feedback, will be in the position to instantly adjust pricing relative to demand. As well, this information is shared with the business analytics, so that the messaging intelligence is constantly improved upon.
 
In 2012, automated solutions that deliver the intelligence, content, and metrics to produce successful integrated in-store marketing campaigns will be a big business. On January 18th, the Digital Signage Federation will be holding an insightful webinar titled ‘State of the DigitalSignage Industry: A Short Look Back & a Long Look Forward.’