How data can help you decode today’s hyper-aware consumers

Sanjeev Sularia, Co-founder and CEO, Intelligence Node

The past decade has been transformative for retail, more so with the pandemic accelerating digitisation and making way for the mass adoption of e-commerce, digital commerce and omnichannel. Today’s customers are hyper-aware, savvy and demanding. They compare products and prices across channels and are further empowered by the rising number of price comparison tools and apps available to them. Add to these the current supply chain issues, inflationary pressures, complex shopping journeys and new shopping avenues such as the metaverse and social commerce, and brands are riddled with a growing mound of challenges.

The rise of data-driven intelligence to address retail disruption

Brands need more than just internal historical data to address these new challenges. They need data that is current, accurate and reliable and which encompasses the entire retail ecosystem – from competitors and global market trends to consumer buying patterns and socio-economic variables. They need data to make evidence-based decisions rather than relying on assumptions and redundant data points.

Leveraging data to dominate the digital shelf

Another area where data has become indispensable is the digital shelf. As the pandemic made e-commerce more mainstream, the need for digital shelf optimisation became more obvious. Only a few years ago, shelf space was primarily physical and dominated by big players who could pay for prime real estate to feature their products across physical locations, but today’s endless digital aisle has made it anybody’s game. Buying ads online just doesn’t suffice when you’re competing with millions of products in your category and real-time sorting algorithms are disrupting the game.

Brands need to strategically position their products and optimise their listings continuously to maintain their position and remain visible to their shoppers. They need insight into where their shoppers are, what keywords they are using to search for their products, what other products they are looking at in the same category, or how they navigate on different channels throughout their buying journeys – calling for advanced, sophisticated consumer intelligence. They also need real-time insight into how their competitors are performing, how best to optimise prices, what products to order for, or how their consumers perceive their brand to rise and stay above the clutter.

How Intelligence Node can help