Gain a competitive edge with your retail data

Next Mile can help retailers make the most of their retail data by investigating buyer behaviour and location intelligence, with the use of HERE Map Data. 

In a world filled with choice, consumers have countless opportunities to ‘vote with their feet,’ a humble way of saying that where you buy your goods matters. In the last 18 months, rhetoric such as this has become more mainstream and forefront of mind for shoppers as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic start to become realised by businesses. Thus, customer loyalty becomes essential to securing revenue. 

Knowing that you have to outperform your competitors can seem like a daunting task. Though it doesn’t have to be that way, in fact you have almost everything you need already. The answer lies within your data. 

Each retailer collects data, all day, every day. So what do you do with all of it? Where is it stored? This might be where you fall down and your competitor strides ahead. 

Use your existing data to add value 

How can you make use of all your data, rather than it being stored somewhere obscure on a spreadsheet perhaps? How do you visualise these data to make timely decisions based on what’s happening in the market? 

Think about how much existing data you have about consumers. From demographic factors such as age, income and sex; to geographic factors, such as location. So, what do you know about your loyal customers and how can you use this knowledge to your advantage? It all comes down to synthesising meaning from what you know and using these inferences to add value for your customer. 

Each loyal customer has a home address and a work address—these two locations can play a large part in dictating their shopping behaviour. In addition to these, we can also take into account other location data that is useful to building a better picture. If your loyal customers live proximal to the store, it makes good sense for them to prioritise your store over others. 

But what if they live a few suburbs away and in fact, there’s another retailer closer to their home address? What you could deduce is that your store is a convenient stop off during their commute. So, do they visit at on-peak or off-peak hours usually? Or perhaps your store location has a better parking layout than others? Location data can provide valuable insights into a consumer's buyer behaviour, enabling you to add value and maintain a competitive edge. 

How HERE Map Data will benefit your business 

Your consumer data is one part of the puzzle, and HERE Map Data is the piece that makes it all fit together. HERE Map Data is a robust data library which enables you to simply collate and view your consumer data in one centralised location. HERE Map Data also provides roads and routing information, real-time traffic and infrastructure information—compiling everything you need to understand your customers behaviour better. 

Imagine yourself as an example, having the choice to ‘vote with your feet’ and choose any supermarket within a 10km radius of your house. You just need a few items for dinner, and you choose one store to go and collect those. Do you give a thought to why you chose that store? Is it the closest to your house? Or perhaps they have better prices? What’s the store experience like, or is there parking nearby? Placing yourself in the shoes of the consumer helps you understand the complexity of a buyer persona and all of the variables that feed into what makes them loyal to your store. 

HERE Map Data compiles valuable location data onto a map which helps your business make sense of the complex buyer journey. The data library consists of a multitude of data including live-traffic information, points of interest along the route, historical traffic information and more. Furthermore, HERE provides the flexibility to connect their API’s or to download the content and use it freely in your mapping application or business intelligence platform. With Next Mile Location Technology, you can enjoy the difference of the HERE Technologies licensing; whereby you will only be charged by use case, enabling you to avoid unnecessary fees. 

Complement your data with HERE Map Data

When you pair together your existing demographic and geographic data, you can begin to form some insights about specific segments of your loyal customers and discover better ways to keep them loyal. 

Next Mile takes the guesswork out of synthesising data into actionable insights. Through our network of partners, we can remove the need to sift through data sets by providing powerful geospatial visualisation. Let’s face it, all data has a location component, and maps make the most sense in comprehending the implications of it. 

With our partner HERE Technologies and our services partners, we can provide you with the ability to extract valuable insights about your customers' loyalty through your data. Using your existing customer data set and complementing your data with HERE Map Data, businesses can form personas based upon behaviour patterns giving you more insight into brand loyalty and reasons why a consumer would choose your store over alternatives. 

Want to know more? 

If you’d like to integrate HERE Map Data as part of your retail business, reach out to the Next Mile team. We are experts in building bespoke, data driven solutions.