New startup partnership paves way for more impactful retail experiences
At first glance, corporations and startups might seem too disparate to work together towards a common goal. But in order to keep up with what’s the latest in technology and innovation, it’s essential for corporations to keep a pulse on the startup ecosystem within their industry. Establishing partnerships with early-stage companies not only allows corporations to detect emerging needs from the market early-on, but can provide them with new technologies to improve business operations and shopping experiences.
At Valora, we’re constantly looking for opportunities to learn more about our customers. We believe that the better we understand our customers, the better we’ll be able to provide them with impactful shopping and service experiences. From customer surveys and in-person interviews, to monitoring sales trends and collaborating with brick-and-mortar landlords, we continue to test out and apply a diverse range of methods to collect customer insights and improve our product offering.
In our latest effort to gain deeper customer insights, we’re partnering with Berlin-based startup MiNODES. MiNODES is leading the way in retail analytics and omnichannel retargeting across Europe. Their sensor-based analytics platform and offline-to-online retargeting engine enables brick and mortar retailers to drive consumer engagement and discover advanced consumer insights in a calculated, data-driven approach.
To kick-off our partnership with MiNODES, we’ll be executing a six-month pilot program to discover deeper insights on the commuting behaviors of our customers and their shopping behaviour across our different formats.
The technology MiNODES uses to collect data is fairly straightforward — hardware sensors in retail stores detect WiFi signals of the customer’s smartphone and derives their location. Data is collected and aggregated anonymously, and MiNODES ensures the security and privacy of all data generated and sent to their servers. From there, MiNODES crunches the customer data and will deliver us unique, novel analytical insights.
Here are just a few ways these analytics can help improve our customer retail experiences:
- By analyzing store traffic patterns, we can optimize the number of staff needed at different times throughout the day and adjust store opening and closing hours.
- Through a deeper analysis of customer footfall patterns, POS selection behavior, and footfall patterns in relationship to specific sets of circumstances (time of day, number of store visitors, etc.), we can better understand shopping habits as they fall into a larger commuter journey and customer story.
- By accessing insights on customer overlap between our different store brands, we can incentivize customers to either start shopping more frequently within our retail group or encouraging them to keep coming back through loyalty offers and promotions, depending on their unique habits and trends.
This initial partnership with MiNODES is just one example of how working with startups can help us impact our industry in new ways.
Valora is eager to continue partnering with startups that are breaking ground in retail innovations. If your startup is testing new technology in retail environments, reach out to us to learn more about our challenges and discuss opportunities to work together.
