Whether you are an established brand or a young start-up, there are always issues with products being executed properly in retail. Your company has seemingly completed all the necessary tasks getting your product placed in-store with retailers and now you find out that your target customers are not having a desired experience when shopping at their favorite retailers. What happened? Your products may be priced wrong, out of stock, or even worse, stuck in the stock-room instead of on the sales floor. You are not alone! This is a constant and the biggest headache for brands who work with brick-and-mortar retailers. In this blog post, we are going to explore various solutions that you can implement in overcoming retail execution issues.
Recently, the introduction of emerging technologies like VR, AR and AI by large retailers have not been appropriately utilized and have not led to effective retail execution. Hence, the need for 3rd party agencies like Retailbound that offer mobile in-store audits which offer accurate assurance with both photos and quantitative data that your products are properly placed. The need for 3rd party agencies is more important when it is realized that sales are lethargic and the customer experience has been hampered due to retail execution issues.
To improve retail execution, special attention should be paid to the following:
1. Measuring Results
It is easy to develop and launch a marketing campaign once a line of products has been assorted in-stores. But, if your product is in tens, hundreds, or even thousands of retail stores, how do you know that your marketing campaign is being executed correctly? It can be beyond tedious for brands to focus on data gathering and analysis, especially with stores that are not geographically close. This is why it is important to use services like Retailbound Vision, so you can focus on other activities. Retailbound Vision is not just an ordinary in-store audit service, instead, Retailbound Vision combines both the data gathering (i.e. taking photos and answering a handful of survey questions) and the data analysis (i.e. reviewing aggregated data and offering recommendations for store execution improvement).
2. Addressing in-store issues promptly
If your products are placed in many stores, it can be extremely hard to track real-time activities; yet, it is important that urgent issues are solved in timely manner. This execution could make all the difference between losing a customer and growing market share. By using a streamlined mobile data collection system, you will be able to manage your retailers to drive incremental sales and increase customer awareness of your brand in-store.
3. Observing shopper behavior
To improve in-store execution, brands need to know how shoppers interact with their products. Data obtained from customer behavior will help in improving the overall shopping experience. In addition, the data will help in providing the equitable boundaries for in-store promotions. For example, item affinity will help in creating marketing campaigns for matching products that complement each other. This information is essential for marketers in knowing what products and categories will be adjacent to each other on the shelves. Retailbound Vision is providing the technology that is central to the transformation of retail brands into more robust customer service organizations. Retailbound Vision steps in your customers’ shoes and helps you understand them better.
Issues affecting retail execution are vast and they have to be solved in order to create a unique experience for the end customer. A lot of money is left on the table when appropriate actions are not taken timely. At Retailbound Vision, we offer competitive pricing to audit your retail partners to make sure your retail go-to-market strategy is being executed properly. If you are interested in getting a quote, contact Yohan Jacob at yjacob@retailbound.com.
