The arrival of the ‘Metailer’

Retail is moving from the store to the consumer. In the past, you understood retail by looking at ‘profit per store’ and took action by store – opening, closing or refitting, or by hiring a new manager.

By Michael Ross, chief scientist at eCommera

We are now moving to a world where all retailers and brand owners will have the (theoretical) capability to have insight and take action at the individual customer level.  This is not necessarily just about personalisation or loyalty, though it could be.

It is simply about recognising that profitable growth is driven by the cost effective acquisition and retention of customers. So understanding individuals – their purchasing patterns, their behaviours, their wants and needs – is critical to optimising your business.

Failing to do so is simply a recipe for sub optimisation.  And, in a competitive market, sub-optimisation is a recipe for failure. We have moved from a world of anonymous and captive customers, to a world where they are known and unshackled.

Responding to this fundamental and seismic shift is the emergence of a new breed of ‘customer-centric retailer-cum-brand owner’: a metailer. So what will this metailer look like?

•   A culture of metrics and data, with data scientists at the heart of the business
•   Strategy driven by consumer insight
•   Business planning driven by customer acquisition  and retention dynamics
•   Organised around coherent customer groups
•   Measuring things that matter to customers
•   Relentless focus on experience.

Metailers understand that modern customers believe ‘it is all about me’ and align their strategy accordingly.

To understand what is going on in a world of ‘stores’, retailers simply need to be good at stores.  It’s easy to identify good and poor performing stores and understand what is working and not working. But in a world of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of customers, one has to be good at statistics.

Understanding how to make sense of large quantities of transactional data requires a different skill set. It requires new types of thinking, new models and new equations. And the successful metailers will be the ones who embrace this new world. The battle for customers is just beginning.

www.ecommera.com