Predictive Simulation, Interaction Analysis, Partner Ecosystem Further Expand Ultimate In-Store Analytics Platform for Retailers
RetailNext Inc., the worldwide market leader in retail analytics for brick-and-mortar stores, today announced two breakthrough capabilities and further expansion of the partner ecosystem using its industry-standard retail analytics platform. Using RetailNext, retailers can simulate the impacts of potential store layout and other operational changes, analyze and optimize associate-customer interactions in-store, and take advantage of multiple value-add solutions fueled by and measured by one, centralized, in-store analytics platform.
Predictive simulation
The RetailNext platform now combines statistical modeling of historical in-store traffic patterns and other shopping behavior with a simulation engine to predict future in-store behavior based on changes to the store. Retailers can simulate any number of different scenarios such as larger footprint stores, interior remodels or simple floorset changes before making investments to the physical store environment.
"Making changes in a retail environment is expensive and, even for small control tests, it's not often feasible for retailers to experiment with more than a few, let alone dozens, of possibilities," said George Shaw, RetailNext's head of Research and Development. "Predictive simulation delivers an ideal way to experiment with fixtures, merchandising, staffing and more, and evaluate impacts on both shopper experience and store performance, all with minimal investment and risk."
Interaction analysis
Interaction analysis provides powerful insights into how store associates and shoppers interact throughout the store, driving not only the delivery of more enriching, value-added shopping experiences to consumers, but directly impacting stores' most meaningful performance metrics. Retailers can measure the correlation between sales and a variety of interaction metrics such as time until first interaction, duration of interactions, whether interactions were static or moving throughout the store, and more.
"Stores are increasingly tasked with delivering value to shoppers that they can't receive online," said Bridget Johns, head of customer success at RetailNext, "and sales associates often hold the key. Rich, actionable insights on the impact of associates' greetings and customer service allows retailers to better optimize their assisted shopping environments."
RetailNext platform expansion
RetailNext has also expanded its ecosystem of value-add solution providers utilizing its industry-leading platform. Partners such as StepsAway, for timely and targeted promotions, Theatro, for wearable devices to alert and advise sales associates, and Celect, for hyper-local assortment and merchandising optimization, can utilize in-store shopping behavior data from RetailNext to provide retailers more data-driven, localized solutions. With both inbound and outbound API integration, RetailNext provides the in-store analytics data and closes the loop by measuring in-store performance of these value-add solutions.
"The value RetailNext provides to our customers is driven in part by continuously innovating to bring new, powerful in-store analytics and answers to today's tough retail challenges," said Marc Dietz, Chief Marketing Officer at RetailNext. "But our customers are now deriving even more value with a centralized, in-store analytics platform that adds value to other solutions."