Big Data Analytics Could Help Retailers Understand Customers Better

By Rhonda Campbell
Retailers across the United States and abroad rely on big data analytics to help them understand the needs, concerns and wants of their customers. By using retail big data, retailers can also learn about developing purchasing trends exhibited by consumers, people who are a part of their large prospective customer market. On the other hand, without dependable and accurate data, retailers can find themselves spending hours trying to guess at what customers really want. Over time, this could start to impact a business owners’ product or service sales and overall profits.

Identifying Customer Behaviors Using Big Data Analytics
The right retail big data analytics provide the right tracking, record keeping and reporting tools to help retailers truly become customer centric. Benefits of achieving this include improved customer retention rates, improved customer segmentation, the ability to measure integrated point of sale systems, optimized marketing efforts and boutique level support and services. Some of the suite of products retailers can get from companies that provide big data analytics are secure data sourcing, customer database management services and dozens of customized dashboards store managers, executives and other staff can use to track retail big data.

For example, some big data analytics products are built to track and provide more than 60 different types of retail metrics. Other products offer retailers more than 30 different reports and dashboards, tools retailers can use to know which parts of their marketing or advertising efforts they should focus on most. Features gained from using these retail big data products include inventory and customer order reporting, financial metrics, customer breakout analytics and the ability to track sales department performance.

Managing Retail Big Data Elements
In addition, customer performance metrics built into retail big data products allow retailers to get a more in-depth insight into the makeup of their customers. Using customer centric big data analytics, retailers can also discover who their most loyal customers are. For example, they can find out which customers have been buying products from them the longest. They can also find out the types of products loyal customers generally buy from them as well as the times of year, month or week loyal customers buy their products.


When it comes to marketing campaigns, big data analytics aid retailers in understanding how different prospective customers behave when they shop at their stores or visit their commercial websites, browsing through different product categories. This retail big data can be used by retailers to find specific website pages or store sections at their companies that need to be enhanced to turn browsers into paying customers. Additionally, big data analytics are used by retailers to identify the right audience to target and market new products to.

Cost savings gained from these and other retail big data products can be used by retailers to reinvest in product development, customer relationship management processes and employee development programs. Furthermore, cloud and big data analytics cloud components of reporting and metric products are used to align retail products to with consumer hobbies, annual income levels and other consumer lifestyle segment definitions. For example, some big data analytics cover more than 350 different demographics and interest data 120 million United States households. Not only is the data delivered to retailers, it can also be updated and stored and used with various technological applications.

Top companies that provide big data analytics focus on helping their clients achieve immediate return on investment. They understand their clients’ needs and the urgency their clients have to get results. Before contracting with companies that provide retail big data, consider testing driving some of their products. For example, some companies allow retailers to use demos so they can see firsthand how some of the products work.