The cutting-edge technologies of the day are transforming the business of almost every sector while enhancing their efficiency. The retail sector, which is one of the flourishing domains, is catering to the needs and requirements of a large population every day. Hence, it needs to embrace state-of-the-art technologies and implement them properly to enrich the experience of consumers while augmenting business prospects. The sector has been witnessing technological intervention for the last few years and it is expected that it will see the introduction of many more technologies in the years to come. 

“Consumer psychography is changing in today’s time. Now consumers are demanding higher than ever and the margin for error is minimal. Hence, every single brand is on the prowl to communicate with the consumer using technology. Technology innovation cannot be avoided and the goal is to ensure that whatever data is available is translated into information and that information is translated into insight to understand the consumer. For instance, a company like Netflix saves close to $1 billion annually on their customer retention program by putting technology into place and playing around with data to give the consumer what they are looking at,” Nishant Poddar, Chief Marketing Officer & Head Retail Experience, USPL said.

Using Technology to Enhance Consumer Experience

Mapping the Consumer Funnel

It’s important to map the consumer funnel for the brand’s loyal consumers. “We map the consumer funnel by tracking the consumer lifetime value and also tracking the net promoter score. In today's day and age, consumer needs to be taken seriously and the brands need to ensure that the communication is done in the fashion that they would want to hear and are looking to do. Hence, technology would play a major role in doing all of this,” Poddar stated.

Same Experience through Multiple Customer Touchpoints

The most important bit is to understand that there are multiple touchpoints for consumers to buy the product and giving the same experience throughout these touchpoints has been a challenge for the brands. “There are two parts to solving this problem. One is your go-to-market or your marketing strategy should be effective for all the touchpoints. Second is your content strategy that explains to consumers the value of the brand and the product. These are the two things that will play a really big role in getting the mind share that is required,” Shishir Gupta, Head – Omnichannel, Arvind Fashions Limited asserted.

Customized Data

Brands need to understand their core consumers as the preferences of the customers are changing on a day-to-day basis. The idea is how to bring about this pool of knowledge on a data platform and eventually make sure that you are remarketing more to the same customer rather than trying to acquire new customers. The other part is to use the data that's floating around and eventually make your processes, systems, and products better.

“For instance, at BESTSELLER India, we have a lot of data on various regions or various cities where we sell our products. Now, there are certain products that do sell well in one particular region while they absolutely don't in the other region. What we were doing pre-pandemic is bombarding customers with all kinds of information and products. But now post-pandemic, the customer does not want to see the riff-raff around, they want more customization. Customers want customized data to be shown to them so that they spend lesser quality time on wherever the platform they are at. The idea is to provide crisp information to the consumers which make them make a better choice of our products,” Sugam Asani, Chief Brand Officer, BESTSELLER India stated.

Building Brand Awareness

When you are doing digital marketing for brands, it has a different KPI because you are looking at a view-through rate or click-through rate. It depends on the category that you want to build and the channel you are targeting. “We focus on the cost of acquisition in our D2C business. Because if I want to scale and I can control the cost of acquisition, I can acquire as many customers as possible and then retain them with a better service experience. So it all depends upon where the brand is in the journey and what matters to them. A well-established brand like Aashirvaad doesn’t have an awareness issue; they're looking at the right content for the right audience. But for a new brand like Fabelle chocolates, awareness is the major thing for them. So they will look at different metrics. Hence, it all depends upon what metrics matter to you,” Rajnish Kumar, Head Digital & Direct to Consumer, ITC Limited.