analytics Archives - VM Unleashed

What makes a customer love a retailer? It is about keeping your promises!

Retail Week has published its annual list of the most-loved retailers in the UK. Interestingly if you are looking for big picture trends relating to product sectors, or types of retailers, you will struggle to discover any conclusive findings. Understandably retailers that deliver low prices are very well represented in the cost-of-living climate, but by no means are all low price retailers loved. Some, are clearly not loved at all.-

Why Local Shopkeepers have more ‘Retail Intelligence’ than retail multiples!

Disruptive pureplay retailers have brought about an essential change to traditional business structures and processes. Well, ones that have watched and have quickly learned themselves. Best practice retail businesses now put the customer and customer data at the heart of the business. Customer centric & data centric. Everyday processes and new initiatives begin and end with the customer. Informed business act quickly, learn again from the customer, adapt, and improve.-

Invisible Technologies that turn ‘Product Graveyards’ into ‘Perpetual Distribution Centres!”

In the annual debate about the best use of retail technology budgets, heads are often turned by the ‘sexier’, and highly visible software solutions that enhance the visual interface and the customer experience. The rise of pureplay, the need for graphic stimulation, digital interaction, and brand immersion, all catapulted augmented and virtual reality to the top of IT director shopping lists. They are of course equally amazing and important. But-

Can we find hope for ethical retailing in the fallout from Black Friday?

Black Friday is generally recognised as the epitome of mass-market retailing, a customer celebration of huge price reductions, and the shifting of eye-watering volumes of merchandise. For retailers a big blow to margins, but the salvation before Christmas in terms of units sold, and this year an opportunity to offload unprecedented unsold, unwanted overstock to clear the shelves for the next year’s refill. Dreaded by advocates of sustainable & circular-

Discover a ‘Five-Star Christmas: “Meaning in the Retail Madness”

“An excellent read *****” “Valuable reference for anyone in retail *****” “This book is more relevant now than ever! *****” ‘Meaning in the Retail Madness’ explains how touchpoints have replaced channels, how linear supply chains will become circular, why assortments are increasingly virtual, how physical is turning to local, and why products and shops are not necessarily made for each other anymore. It supplies a blueprint for retail’s new ‘agile-

The importance of teaching my LCF students about ‘Looking-In & Looking-Out’ when researching and defining brand propositions.

My exciting project with the London College of Fashion (LCF) this Autumn is progressing well. The student groups have been matched with young designers, part of the alumni at LCF. The Collaborative Challenge for the students is to work with their designers and evolve these fledgling businesses into complete market propositions with commercial channel strategies, target customer profiling, and with brand identities brought to glorious life with physical shop visualisations,-

Supply & Demand: Always driving the fortunes and misfortunes of retailers

Supply & Demand: Always driving the fortunes and misfortunes of retailers The latest retail sales figures do not make good reading. Everything from footfall to sales volumes, margins and profits are down. Behind the data the customer is quaking under the pressure of rising costs and inflation. This is the news. The reality of the ‘new normal’ after COVID is more about the balance between digital and physical sales. In-

‘Selling-our-Souls’ for product salvation

‘Selling-our-Souls’ for product salvation Certainly, for those amongst us not born with a mobile in our hands, the thought of giving away our personal data and intimate thoughts and activities to brands and retailers sometimes seems quite shocking, intrusive at the very least. We spend our lives opting out of data sharing whenever we take on the latest apps, beginning any new involvement with brands and retailers on the data-

How to think & act like a ‘Digital-first’ brand or retailer

What even is a digital-first brand or retailer? What does digital-first actually mean? In essence, it is the culture and the practice, of putting digital considerations of every kind at the forefront of strategies and operations. To be digitally-led. To be digital-first. It is the key for every business now. And it is equally essential irrespective of what your relative retail sales are from digital and physical channels. In fact-

IKEA: The value of ‘groundwork’ not ‘deskwork’ . From ‘customer to community experiences!’

IKEA: ‘A lively happening’ coming soon to a place nearby There are many interesting learnings from the opening of the new IKEA shops across the globe, not least the fact that the roll-out is happening at a pace against a back-drop of shop closures, particularly amongst established chains. There is much to digest in the location of the shops, the retail and social environments that IKEA is creating around them,-