Customer Data

Much of the conversation about how marketers can collect, harness and effectively use zero-party data focuses on brands, which struggle to gather it, or information consumers proactively provide, because businesses rarely maintain direct relationships with customers at scale. Retailers face an entirely different challenge: an abundance of consumer touchpoints and a massive amount of data…

Data will play an instrumental role for marketers this holiday season. With ongoing issues like excess inventory, supply chain bottlenecks, and the impact of rising prices on consumers, the 2022 holiday shopping season is requiring marketers to adjust to a challenging ecosystem to reach the right customers and make the most of every moment. Real-time…

Successful retailers in 2022 understand that digitization isn’t enough — digital acceleration is crucial. The state of digital acceleration that was sparked by mass quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic changed how businesses operate and consumers behave. According to Gartner, 65 percent of executives say they accelerated their digital initiatives' pace in 2021 — and this…

Privacy changes have forced marketers to consider how they can consensually obtain consumer data, inspiring debate over whether zero-party data exists and how it differs from first-party data. While first-party data refers to information brands collect directly from consumers, zero-party data, as defined by Forrester, refers to information that consumers proactively and knowingly give organizations.…

Unwanted inventory and a higher demand for low-cost items forced prominent retailers to adjust their earnings forecast and miss their estimates, causing the cancellation of billions in orders and heavy markdowns. Chalked up by one CFO as a short-term fix to avoid longer-term pain, the strategy nevertheless indicates that many large retailers don't understand their…

Direct-to-consumer (D-to-C) businesses that previously relied heavily on Facebook as an advertising channel are now starting to realize the perils that resulted from privacy policy changes instituted by Apple. These changes have upended the digital advertising strategy for hundreds of thousands of businesses and have forced these companies to find a new path to their…

There are few in retail circles who would argue that the role of the store is the same as it ever was. With the rate of change accelerating like never before, consumers are throwing new challenges at retailers faster than they can implement solutions. It’s no wonder that many retailers seem to be in a…

In episode 366 of Total Retail Talks, Michael Cleavinger, global commercial data science lead at PepsiCo, discusses the organization's data strategy for both customer and product data, and its unique data collection process. He shares examples of how PepsiCo is leveraging data to inform decision making, as well as how his data science team shares information with other departments across the organization.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are just around the corner, and it’s never too early to prepare ahead. This year, in addition to the lingering effects of the pandemic, there’s a looming recession that’s shifting consumer behavior and demand. Product and fulfillment costs are rising, consumption is declining, and inventories are surging. As a…

The digital landscape is evolving at lightning speed. Retailers are overwhelmed due to the multifaceted nature of their work that requires them to manage multiple digital channels, work with different tools, analyze data, and make faster decisions. The increasing number of Martech solutions makes it even more complex — 9,932 in 2022 compared with 7,040…