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January - 2017 - issue > CXO Insights

Instore Real-time Personalization: Relevant, Contextual and Rewarding Customer Engagement

Amit Rohatgi, Director-Product Management, Manthan
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Amit Rohatgi, Director-Product Management, Manthan
Headquartered in Bengaluru, Manthan's portfolio of analytics-enabled business applications, advanced analytics platforms & solutions are architected to help users across industries walk the complete data-to-result path - analyze, take guided decisions and execute the decisions real-time.

Pick up any newspaper and you will see hundreds of advertisement luring customers to one retailer or the other. Radio and TV blare jingles in tune with the brand promise of various products and urge the customers to engage with them. However, big budget marketing efforts as they are, how much of an impact do you think they make on individual customer? Compare this to a personalized message that one receives on her mobile, identifying her as a distinct shopper, pre-empting her shopping need. The personalised message guides her to the best offer on the product / category that she is most likely to shop, and that too while she is still inside the store, trying to make up her mind on what to buy! Which of these above scenarios do you think the customer is more likely to respond to?

The e-Commerce sites have always claimed a higher ground when dealing with customer preference and offering her suitable recommendations to encouraging greater engagement, resulting in higher sales. On a shopping site each customer is individually recognised, her purchase history and shopping preference duly analysed and offers are generated and communicated while the customer is still on the site. All information required for the product they want to check out is available on their fingertips and their queries pre-empted. The restless, on the move customer is offered instant gratification that she seeks. Most offline retailers, relying on the traditional means of marketing fall short of offering same level of engagement, experience and excitement to their customer base. However with real-time in-store personalization, they can replicate the same engagement and experience and win customer delight.

What is In-store Personalization?

In-store personalization is the ability to identify customers, understand their current context, overlap it with analysis or their past behaviours, purchases and preferences and respond back with highly relevant and personalized recommendations. And, this needs to be done needs to be done at lightning speed while they are still inside store evaluating a purchase. This allows retailers to capitalize on cross sell and up-sell opportunities based on the ability to impact the purchase decision and instant offers that provoke impulse buying. Retailers usually identify a customer at the PoS, but, by then it is too late and vital opportunities are missed.


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