CHICAGO — Most retailers are not making full use of the loyalty card data available to them to make promotional decisions, Jim Hertel, managing partner at Willard Bishop, Barrington, Ill., said Tuesday during a webinar co-sponsored by his firm and The Food Institute.
“The single biggest skills gap at retail is the gap between access to the information and making good decisions based on that data," Hertel said.
According to Craig Rosenblum, a partner in the Bishop firm, “You can crawl, walk or run into the ocean of data that's available, and it can be overwhelming. But going after just one segment of the data — looking at your top shoppers, for example, or ways to convert the second tier to become top shoppers — can take you a long way."
The two executives also said the smaller-format stores that served specific neighborhoods in the early years of supermarketing will be the format of the future.
“The small-format store — not necessarily 15,000 square feet, but right-sized to fit the neighborhood — will expand and offer significant value to shoppers in each neighborhood," Hertel noted. "It will be back to the future, where local stores will do the best job of satisfying shoppers within a couple of miles around them."
Rosenblum said these smaller stores will not necessarily be operated by new retailers, "but they will develop as a result of today's retailers expanding into different formats, particularly as some companies go out of business and more retail space opens up at lower prices."
