Retail

Supermarkets have found new paths to growth by concentrating on “lowest cost” products and retailer-owned brands. The “hard discount strategy”, until recently considered a must, is winding down. “Close to home” retail and e-commerce are on the rise, due to the time they save consumers.

The relationships retailers had previously established with their customers have been upset by regulation changes (i.e. the Galland law reforms; television publicity slot authorization; etc.) and new technologies (i.e. interactive advertisements).

To do so, Soft Computing offers a range of services designed to help retailers rapidly reach their objectives by:

• Defining communications strategies that will yield media/non-media synergies and identify how the latest technological evolutions and/or regulations will impact relationship marketing,
• Growing the Return on Investment of customer loyalty development operations: through designing and adapting the customer loyalty development strategy; optimizing existing programs by adapting earn and burn criteria to fit client expectations; and developing projects in collaboration with brands,
• Simplifying campaign management and increasing DM operational returns (mailing and emailing), by hosting and managing the customer database and implementing strategies based upon a better understanding of customer segments and associated communication types,
• Managing satisfaction and evaluating service quality from a customer perspective; measuring expected service quality; determining prioritized actions needed to obtain increased customer satisfaction and loyalty,
• Enriching Customer Knowledge: behavioural segments; typologies; customer value, attrition and lifecycle scores; trade-off studies; crossing of internal data with external customer evaluations, so as to evaluate which portion of purchases belonging to the competition can be captured; etc.
• Managing store performance: through the set-up of a point of sales “typology” and the conception of performance benchmarks, so as to achieve a best in class level for each group of stores, and by optimizing the product mix according to visibility constraints and demand,
• Optimizing websites: by setting-up strategies and personalization tools based upon real-time internet user behavioural analysis, and by structuring web pages so as to encourage cross-selling by presenting customers with products associated with his or her profile,
• Choosing the best adapted tools, insuring an optimal configuration and deploying them at points of sales or by hosting ASP solutions,
• Assisting users of customer data through the management of efficient decisional systems.

Selected examples

• Auchan:
  Customer satisfaction barometer for the majority of its stores worldwide (France, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Taiwan, Russia, etc.),
• Fnac:
  Customer segmentation, target optimization, analysis of associated product mix, satisfaction and customer performance barometers.
• Fnac:
  Automated marketing campaign follow-up dashboard.
• Lapeyre:
  Assisted with the implementation of Sales-force oriented Information Systems.
• Leroy Merlin:
  Customer segmentation and assistance building marketing database.
• Orcanta:
  Built marketing database, the core of marketing and loyalty development actions; Increased return on investment for direct marketing campaigns.
• Orcanta:
  Operate customer database so as to increase the profitability of Direct Marketing campaigns.
• Petit Bateau:
  Set-up and operation of CRM system (campaigns, web sites, management, loyalty score calculations, etc.).
• Printemps:
  For the loyalty program business plan, performed data mining analysis so as to identify customer types and profiles.
• Sephora:
  Designed and implemented loyalty program.

Main References

AS 24, Auchan, Boulanger, Carrefour, Casino, Castorama, Decathlon, ETAM, Fnac, Habitat, Kiabi, Lapeyre, Leroy Merlin, La Redoute, Match, Orcanta, Petit Bateau, Pizza Hut, Point P, Printemps, Purodor, Relais H, Sodexho, Sogeres, Surcouf, Système U.