Cabela's Right-Sizing of Store Staff Boosts Sales

Executives at sporting goods and apparel retailer Cabela’s believe that when it comes to its most technically sophisticated high-performance products, the presence of a salesperson to interact with and guide customers is crucial to making the sale. But a belief isn’t enough to make a business case, so the retailer used sophisticated tools to analyze shopper behavior in its stores. The resulting data supported higher staff levels in Cabela’s performance footwear and gun departments, and when staff levels were raised in Q4 of 2010, sales in these categories increased. “We’ve used some rather advanced analytic tools to measure how