Joel Goldstein is the President of Mr. Checkout Distributors.
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Spotting and adopting retail trends properly is both a science and an art in their ability to open you up to new methods to please your clients and generate big commercial returns.
Retail is undergoing a metamorphosis, much like any industry, and leaders must adapt to the fourth industrial revolution's pressures as well as significant societal changes. Because of the ongoing shifts in consumer behavior and the pandemic's impact on the global economy, retailers' capacity to engage with customers is more important than ever.
In this article, I will outline six ways to learn what retailers need to know to succeed in 2023 and beyond.
1. Observe and interact with your clients.
Observing your clients and how they presently interact with your company is one of the most efficient ways to acquire an exact pulse on the newest trends. Understanding the behavior of your present consumers can frequently lead to significant insights that you might otherwise overlook.
One useful way to determine whether a recent project is succeeding or failing is to use the foot traffic statistics from your store. You can see broad trends that can help you make better decisions by monitoring where foot traffic increases or decreases.
You can also better comprehend the trends in your store by using precise foot traffic data rather than making unproven assumptions. If you want to succeed in retail and know what you're doing, you must understand your traffic and how it converts.
Without a traffic counter, you can rely too heavily upon assumptions. While you can advance your customer observations by interacting with your customers on a regular basis, utilizing your store's foot traffic patterns to unlock meaningful insights is a powerful place to start.
The legendary Blake Nordstrom was renowned for responding to countless customer emails per day and favored interacting with customers above making media appearances. Take a cue from him and visit many of your stores every three months to engage with consumers face-to-face or spend a day in the shoes of your customer care team. Work to comprehend how they interact with your brand and how to enhance their entire experience.
2. Expand your research horizons.
Avoid the temptation to take the easy route while attempting to discover patterns inside your firm. Visit some of your stores that might not always get the greatest attention from your management team instead of focusing on your most well-known low and high performers. Make an effort to communicate with staff members at all organizational levels and with consumers who might not typically be part of your clientele.
Consider studying and working alongside some of the biggest retail influencers in your sector to gain even more expertise in the most recent retail trends. Learning from an author or stylist, for instance, can provide you special insights into your clientele that might normally take months to get if you worked in the home design industry. Influencers in your industry typically have a good sense of what is currently successful and can assist you in changing your organizational approach as necessary.
3. Encourage staff to share their knowledge.
Building a business culture that empowers and encourages your staff to speak out and share their specific views on how the organization may improve is another essential aspect of properly recognizing retail trends.
The best people to judge whether a new venture will be beneficial are frequently those working there. Unfortunately, many staff can't act on their observations without management clearance, even though they are in the unique situation to provide customers with the best experience.
It's best if you can give your staff more freedom to act on pertinent client information. Making it simple for your staff to email ideas to one another will greatly boost buy-in. Communication platforms and various tools can also be immensely helpful for mass-scale employee insight and observation collection.
Establish a culture at work that values management input, and wherever necessary, demonstrate your willingness to invest the resources required to give them the voice they deserve.
4. Use previous campaign data.
Finding the newest retail trends can be made easier by empowering your staff and interacting directly with your customers. However, one of the best ways to have a clear sense of where your business is going and where you can progress is to use the data from previous campaigns.
5. Understand that consumers are becoming more and more mindful.
Transparency is something customers seek when making purchases from merchants. They are increasingly concerned with sustainability and paying more attention to how their purchases affect the environment.
The labeling of items with social and environmental performance, such as food mile labels, carbon labels or sourcing information, will only increase in the future. Retailers must plan ahead for how they will restock their shelves and be ready to respond to inquiries from customers regarding the sustainability of their offerings. Leaders must prepare to handle a variety of trends and factors if they hope to compete successfully in the future.
6. Optimize your retail design and shop layout.
Your store design process never ends. To build a resonant consumer journey and experience, you might always be altering up, adding or taking away due to continually shifting design trends. But ultimately, it's the client journey that you should pay attention to.
To explore where your retail design leads you, take a stroll inside your store. Take note of how customers react to your fresh graphics, product displays, signage and power wall. Ask your co-workers, family and friends to follow suit and provide you with their honest opinions
Don't forget to watch your customers to discover what draws them in.
With the right strategies, leaders can better determine what to steer clear of as well as anticipate how customers will behave in response to a desired course of action. In the end, these six techniques will assist you in developing a strong retail strategy and layout that benefits both you and your clients.
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