Stephen DiFranco – CEO and Founder IoT Advisory Group writing as a guest writer in Entrepreneur magazine bring a fresh perspective on the recent acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon by describing this buy as a “playground for disruption of retail”. As this gives Amazon a shot at retail analytics, customer traffic management and in–store customer management, going on to add, that this may also provide a testing ground for Amazon to explore “presence marketing “ – the layering of online and offline buying analytics while tracking the movements of shoppers.
And according to Stephen DiFranco, this acquisition is all about disrupting the retail with Amazon bringing the on-line analytics to off-line shopping.
With Amazon getting a patent for “Physical store on-line traffic control “ just days before acquiring Whole Foods, Stephen DiFranco is sure that Big Data will be a big presence in the off-line retailing from now on. With store visitors encouraged to get connected to the store Wi- Fi, they will then by tracked to know about their typical route thru’ the store, with pertinent suggestions sent to customers to prompt them to buy complementary products. Another scenario may be reminding the customers about frequently brought items and the directing them to that location.
With other biggies in the retail sectors moving for consolidation, and retail margins being very thin, Amazon buying Whole Foods is a great advantage since food retail is best for collecting brick and mortar customer data thereby allowing them to leverage data to push volumes.
With food retailer being the most frequently visited stores, as shopping for food is done twice a week. And with customers looking for convenience, they will be purchasing the same items again and again, week after week. And this behavior gives out preferences across product lines and lends itself to behavior analysis giving out clear buying patterns across products and categories.
Amazon using a big data application and massive amounts of data pertaining to a number of visits, product category, minimum purchased, can lead the way in enhancing the customer experience by helping in decision making by delivering notifications, discount offers, and other information at an appropriate time.
To read more, visit: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/296075