Location intelligence and foot traffic analytics are transforming the way retail strategies are defined, and department stores are no exception.
The correlation between foot traffic, sales, and the success of department stores have been studied and proven, so the development of this type of analysis has become a priority in the site selection process and expansion modeling.
Retailers can apply location intelligence techniques and foot traffic analytics to understand consumer mobility patterns, measure foot traffic at each store, understand the performance of their outlets, and estimate competitor turnover.
The correlation between foot traffic visitation, sales, and the success of retail apparel franchises have been studied and proven, so the development of this type of analysis has become a priority in the site selection process and expansion modeling.
Consumers are shifting their spending from physical stores to e-commerce, physical stores will only survive in this new environment if they reinvent their business, taking advantage of new technologies and modern analytical capabilities.
Today, there is access to significant amounts of data on consumer behavior, information on the economy of different areas, competitors' sales, and market trends. However, only a handful of forward-thinking retailers are leading the way in advanced analytics as they use location intelligence, foot traffic analytics, and predictive modeling to make smarter business decisions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exponentially accelerated the growth of e-commerce, but physical stores are still far from disappearing.
Today, retail businesses have accelerated their digitalization strategies by evolving omnichannel processes, trying to maintain their efficiency and generate added value without affecting their operations, as consumers' needs to interact virtually with the different points of sale have increased.
The clothing store market is one of the most popular in the USA, with Big data analytics and location intelligence techniques we made an brief exploratory analysis in Atlanta city.
Case Study: Analysis of Apparel Stores in Atlanta, USA
Using location intelligence techniques it was possible to identify all the stores distributed in the city, the detailed analysis allowed us to classify the venues by market share and identify in which areas of the city they are located. Our research showed that the women’s clothing category is the one with the largest number of stores in the center of Atlanta, while the other categories are distributed in the surrounding areas.
New data management methodologies now allow retailers to take advantage of even the smallest piece of information to generate valuable insights that help optimize their marketing and customer loyalty strategies.
What promotions do we do to get more customers to the point of sale?
How do we make them stay longer in the store?
How do we improve the customer experience so that they buy more at each visit?
In the digital age, location intelligence and foot traffic analytics based on mobility data are changing the retail business, giving many retailers an edge over their competitors.
Location intelligence is defined as a methodology for understanding and visualizing mobility data to help solve a wide variety of retail problems.
Foot traffic analytics is derived from location intelligence, helping retailers to obtain a better understanding about how people move around physical locations and enabling new visibility into consumer behavior patterns by presenting a visualization of people's movement within a physical area, even segmented by the infinite type of consumers who pass near a store.
Between March and April, Walmart opened five new stores of the Palí format, located in Heredia, San José, Alajuela, Cartago and Guanacaste.
The supermarket chain informed that the company invested close to $6.7 million to open these five new stores. With these recent openings, there are now 181 points of sale of the Palí format.
Whether it is a restaurant, a coffee shop, a hotel, a supermarket, or an auto parts store, location is, if not the most important, one of the most decisive factors in determining the success or failure of a business.
Real estate companies, restaurants and retail chains know better than anyone how valuable and decisive it is for the success of a business to find the best location. Technology, together with the new Big Data analysis methodologies, now allow to simplify part of this complex process of location selection, analyzing in detail the pedestrian flow in each location.
Understanding consumers' lifestyles, hobbies, ages and the places they go to, in order to attract a very specific sector of the population, is fundamental to reduce the risk in the investments made for the opening of new specialty stores.
For some years now, the retail sector has been undergoing a transformation, which has been driven by changes in consumer habits and the rise of e-commerce.
Making decisions based on models that collect sociodemographic information of the area, characterizing the commercial environment of the possible locations of new stores and including data on the tastes and preferences of potential customers, reduces the risks of investments in the opening of new points of service.
The work teams and "data driven" companies, organizations that are based on the efficient use of data as the axis of all their processes, have found in the Commercial Intelligence and Geomarketing solutions, a possibility to reduce the risks in new investments associated with expansion plans and opening of new stores.
The AR Holdings business group will open three new stores specialized in sports articles from Deportivo Saprissa, which will be located in the Metropolitan Area.
The first store, which has already opened to the public since September 1, has an area of 141 square meters and is located in the Lincoln Plaza shopping center in Moravia.
In Costa Rica the chain Almacenes El Rey will open in the next months four new points of sale in San Carlos, Perez Zeledon, Liberia and Santa Cruz.
The stores that will soon open to the public will have a different format than those already operating in other areas of the country. The concept of the new establishments will be winery type with a smaller size, when compared to the points of sale located in the Great Metropolitan Area.
After investing $17 million, Walmart opened a new store to the public on July 10, in the canton of San Pablo, province of Heredia.
This new location becomes the 14th store that the chain will operate under the Walmart format and for the operation of this supermarket, the company will hire 123 people, said the official statement.
Considerable investments in the digitalization of operations, the closure of small stores and the expansion of the commercial area of the best located sales points, is part of the strategy that companies are beginning to implement in the new context of business transformation.
Managers of large corporations agree that several companies were already making progress in digitizing sales and operations, but the pandemic ended up persuading decision makers of the need to focus on online sales, and simultaneously accompany it with a plan to transform physical stores.
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