The holiday season and the associated retail rush is right around the corner. Of course, this year, it will look a little different as a result of COVID-19, but that’s all the more reason for retailers and brands to prepare for the holiday season and the new challenges it’s sure to bring this year - for instance an increase in online shopping and use of curbside pickup services.
One way to prepare for and tackle the upcoming season’s potential challenges is with easily interpreted high-quality data that is used to guide decision-making. Getting this data doesn’t take an army of in-house data analysts, it can be provided by solutions like Bungee Tech. For retailers and brands of all sizes, it’s especially important to monitor things like competitor data, stock levels, and promotion performance. A clear understanding of these areas can be drivers of a highly successful shopping season.
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Keep an eye on competitors
According to Nielsen, 70% of shoppers say that convenience is the biggest consideration for where they spend their money. So having flexibility with pick-up or delivery options can be a game-changer. 61% of shoppers count price/value as the key consideration, so promotions, good deals, free shipping can win the purchase. Retailers need to be able to see a picture of the entire market (both online and in the real world) to be competitive.
A clear view of the market is also going to be particularly important this holiday season as people do even more online shopping. Projections show that US consumers will spend $709.78 billion on ecommerce in 2020, representing an increase of 18.0%.
Product matching is crucial
With the arrival of pumpkin spice season and the impending peppermint candy canes, seasonal flavors can flood the market with countless new products. How do retailers and brands compare these to what’s available on the market and set a fair price? The answer is product matching.
Product matching is the process of comparing similar items between retailers, websites, or even physical stores. Matches are made when one product’s details are compared against another, matching SKUs or matching images, titles, product descriptions, or even ingredients. The data provided is the basic foundation that is needed for price, promotion, and assortment comparisons to be useful. Once a product is matched against similar items in the market, retailers and brands are armed with the intelligence to set a fair price which helps to avoid pricing wars, missed profit opportunities, and ultimately lost shelf space to competitors.
Maintain optimal stock levels
Nothing is more frustrating to a shopper than being interested and excited about a product only to find it out of stock when they are ready to buy. This is one of the fastest routes to losing customer loyalty. For brands and manufacturers, ‘out-of-stock’ is critical to avoid around the holidays. Some key stats show:
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42% potential sales loss when in-stock rate drops from 90% to less than 30%.
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It takes 3–4 days to regain full sales volume after just 1 day of being out-of-stock.
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Plus, it takes 6–7 days to recover online organic search placement after 2+ days of being out-of-stock
Keeping the right products stocked in the right locations at the right time is crucial to keeping shoppers happy, to the bottom line, and to coming out ahead of the competition in the holiday sales race.
Run the right promotions
During the holiday season, shoppers are bombarded with marketing messages. Not only is it important to target the right audience at the right time, but it’s also important to speak to customers in a way that will resonate with them. The message could be a creative campaign or be an offer of discounts. According to Harvard Business Review, the ROI for running trade promotions, such as BOGO (buy one, get one), can be 800% or more depending on the product category. If a promotion sees even a portion of that return, it can be a huge boost to the bottom line.
It’s crucial to continually monitor promotional data, track which campaigns are a hit (and which are not), and make changes to strategy accordingly. Reacting quickly to successful promotions, whether they are yours or a competitor’s, could be the difference between a successful shopping season and a ho-hum one.
Bungee Tech: the definitive data source
Competitor data, stock levels, and promotion performance is a lot to keep a firm grasp on, particularly during the hectic holiday shopping season. But that’s where Bungee Tech comes in. They simplify the process of data collection by gathering, extracting and validating all of this information. Through artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning processes they’re able to perform complex similarity matching, with close to 100% data accuracy, taking away the guesswork and allowing businesses to track and monitor the metrics that matter the most.
Bungee Tech’s RetailScape platform allows retailers to see a complete picture of competitor prices, promotions, and stock status both from e-commerce competitors and conventional brick-and-mortar stores multiple times a day.
They also offer a unique solution just for brands and manufacturers which adds to this data; Brandscape. The platform provides valuable insights into customer sentiment, search rankings, and market trends through a wealth of historic data, helping their customers to match, track, and compare products anywhere in the world.
Using high-quality data to draw insights about competitors, stock levels, and promotion performance (and acting on those insights) can really help the bottom line during the holiday season and all year-round. To learn more about Bungee Tech’s industry-leading platform and how it provides crucial data, visit their website.
