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The Relevant Store in the Digital Age: Benchmark 2013
May 8, 2013
As stores try to find their way in a brand new digital world, we asked retailers to candidly share their experiences. Key Findings Retail Winners see stores helping to compete with the online experience and are less likely to think future growth will only come from digital channels. They expect they can reverse the erosion [...]
The Impact of Mobile in Retail
January 10, 2013
While consumers adopt mobile technologies at a breakneck pace, retailers tell us that mobile’s primary ability is to enhance the overall value of the brand. This is a new development for 2012, and is highly encouraging news. What is problematic, however, is that much of what retailers share in the following pages of this report [...]
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 [...]
Retail Business Intelligence: A Work in Progress
October 11, 2012
The rapid shifts in consumer behavior and the proliferation of new channels that are forcing retailers to cope with new data sources, new ways of looking at analytics and new analytics capabilities — combined with new form factors like tablets and smart phones — are upending the well-established discipline of Business Intelligence in retail. The report is [...]
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 [...]
eCommerce 2012: Back to the Future
January 26, 2012
While virtually all retailers expect more revenue to ultimately come from the online channel than ever before, they are more challenged than ever to keep up with evolving consumer behavior. Never before has an exciting online shopping experience that understands the customer’s lifestyle – and how the brand and products can engage and suit that lifestyle [...]
The 21st Century Store Manager
November 15, 2011
Most retail store managers today are in a difficult position. Consumers have adopted mobile technologies at a very rapid pace. Store managers are now outnumbered and outgunned by consumers who are better-equipped to solve their own problems and make their own purchase-related decisions, inside or outside the store. Without an empowered store manager the store [...]
The Local Approach: The State of Localized Advertising in Retail
September 15, 2011
By Nikki Baird & Steve Rowen As retailers struggle to create relevant, “local” experiences in digital channels, they are also challenged to maintain their stores’ relevancy – retailers must rethink the store’s role in a shopping process that increasingly relies on digital experiences. RSR undertook an evaluation of how well retailers are using digital experiences to [...]
Keeping Up with the Mobile Consumer
September 1, 2011
By Nikki Baird & Steve Rowen While much has been made of consumer adoption of smart phones and the havoc it is wreaking on the retail enterprise, very little data exists as to how, exactly, retailers are responding. What are the biggest priorities – apps, mobile sites, mobile marketing campaigns? What about the platforms for devices [...]