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Tough Love: An In-Depth Look at Retail Pricing Practices
April 8, 2013
Retailers continue to escalate the number of price changes they send to stores and other channels. Their field human resource infrastructure groans under the sheer weight of the work effort involved in keeping signage and tags up to date, but pressured by perceived consumer price sensitivity and increased competitive pressures, these price changes continue. This [...]
WFM 2013: The Store Employee in the Customer Age
December 12, 2012
Aside from the instant gratification that comes from taking a product home after a purchase, it’s the store employee that can make the difference to the in-store experience. Most retailers agree, But most have only just tapped the surface of employee education and empowerment. A strong argument for workforce management disciplines and technology- especially for [...]
The Multi-Channel Retailer’s Reality in a Post-Amazon World: Benchmark Report 2012
November 14, 2012
Customers have become channel agnostic, and as a result, retailers know they must be as well. But this year, the challenges typically associated with operating a successful eChannel — all are overcome by cross-channel coordination and inventory deployment. Key Findings Include: 50% of those with top-performing sales (Retail Winners) are operating more than 4 brands or [...]
Optimizing Assortments to Invigorate Retail: Benchmark Report 2012
August 8, 2012
This year, we see a drastic difference in the perceived value of new merchandising tools and retailers’ understanding of how they can be effectively used to improve the product mix they put in front of increasingly-empowered consumers. Key Findings Include: Most merchants place a similar value on new merchandising tools — regardless of size or sales [...]
The 2012 Retail Store: In Transition
May 9, 2012
In the last few years, our continuing research on the “state of the store” has shown us that retailers increasingly understand the need to make the store more relevant. Customers are rapidly tilting the tables with their growing knowledge of products and needs – aided in large part by their breakneck adoption of smart mobile [...]
Retail Pricing in a Post-Channel World: Benchmark Report 2012
April 10, 2012
RSR Research has conducted benchmarks of retailers’ pricing strategies since 2007. During that time, we have seen retailers swing from trying to achieve Everyday Low Price (EDLP) to hyper-promotions as the bottom fell out of consumer demand, to a panicked response to consumers’ latest ability to compare prices, whether between online and store or between [...]
Customer Centricity 2.0: The Rise of the Chief Marketing Officer
December 14, 2011
Retailers are currently struggling with something beyond a proliferation of channels – it’s more like an explosion – both for selling to and communicating with consumers. This disruption is hitting the marketing department, as retailers rush to provide a single customer experience across digital and traditional channels. It is also felt within the retail executive [...]
The Intelligent Retailer’s World of Insight
November 16, 2011
In an era of continued global economic uncertainty, rapid response to market conditions is increasingly important. Once disparate departments within the retail enterprise now need to respond as a single organism. An Enterprise-wide BI strategy is vital to enabling this kind of responsiveness. In RSR’s fifth annual study of business intelligence and analytics capabilities, The [...]
Twenty-first Century Merchandising Takes Hold: Benchmark 2011
August 15, 2011
In 2010, data gathered from RSR’s annual Merchandising Benchmark Report showed a dramatic change in Retailers attitudes towards merchandise operations management. At that time, we defined seven core tenets of 21st Century Merchandising. This year, we gave retailers the opportunity to grade their progress in adopting these tenets. How do they rate themselves? What are [...]
The 21st Century Store: The Search for Relevance
June 15, 2011
Every year, RSR takes a look at “the state of the store.” Our findings consistently show retailers understand the importance of creating a better in-store shopping experience for their customers. However, in 2010 it became clear that armed with more technology than most store employees and managers, the consumer was crafting her own experience – [...]