It wasn’t that long ago when shopping almost exclusively meant that the shopper was going to the store. The digital age added another option by reversing this direction. Now, the store often goes to the shopper by way of screens and delivery services.
Today, shopping can be far more complex than choosing your preferred direction on a straight line. By some calculations,
More and more, this is becoming the new normal of considered purchasing, where each touchpoint serves a distinct purpose in the buyer's decision-making process. While at first glance this may appear to be a challenge for traditional retailers, it actually represents their greatest opportunity. By harnessing the same web data that makes e-commerce so powerful, and combining it with physical presence, they are able to stand out and successfully compete with online platforms.
Web Data is Not Just for Websites
Web data has traditionally been viewed as the preserve of e-commerce, powering everything from competitive intelligence to dynamic pricing. Physical stores have access to the same publicly available information, which they can leverage to devise their strategies.
One avenue for this is pricing intelligence, which involves monitoring competitors' online prices, inventory levels, and promotional calendars in real time. Having this information to hand allows brick-and-mortar retailers to adjust their in-store strategies with unprecedented agility. This ability to adapt could be critical. An in-depth
Intelligence on product demand availability could also be increasingly valuable for physical retailers. For instance, when an online competitor starts to run low on popular items – information readily available on their websites – physical stores can capitalize by prominently highlighting their immediate availability. For many consumers, the instant gratification of walking out with a product is still preferable to same-day delivery.
Physical retailers can also analyze regional e-commerce inventory data and shipping timelines to identify inventory gaps in their local markets. In other words, if major online retailers show extended delivery times for specific products in a specific geographical area – whether due to warehouse limitations or shipping constraints – local stores can position themselves as the immediate solution.
Dynamic Response Strategies
Today's retailers implement what might be called "responsive retail strategies", where online data triggers particular actions in store. For instance, if data shows that certain product categories are undergoing price compression online during specific periods, stores can preemptively adjust their margins on complementary products that maintain higher price stability. According to research,
Product spotlights represent another powerful response strategy that has been gaining in sophistication due to the availability of search trend data and online review sentiment analysis. In essence, physical retailers can now identify emerging demand in their regions well before it peaks. They can create attractive displays for their inventory in advance and tap into that demand at the optimal moment.
For instance, if web data indicates growing interest in specific product features or benefits, shop employees can be instantly briefed to emphasize them in their interactions with customers. Additionally, if competitors' stock availability patterns and online search trends suggest they will exhaust their hot-item inventory at the beginning of a sales event, physical stores can launch targeted campaigns highlighting their continued availability.
These dynamic response strategies make the promotional calendar more adaptive and data-driven, enabling physical retailers to make the most of the shopping events.
The Physical Advantage in a Digital World
Physical stores possess inherent advantages, including the ability to provide immediate fulfillment, tangible product experiences, and human expertise. Incorporating web data can amplify the benefits of physical retail, provided retailers know exactly when and how to deploy these advantages.
Mystery shopping and manual competitive analysis, while still relevant, are steadily giving way to more sophisticated observation by digital means. In some cases, this even includes satellite imagery to analyze traffic patterns in parking lots and gauge competitors' performance. When paired with social media check-ins, web traffic data, and keeping tabs on the number of reviews that e-commerce platforms are racking up online, a thorough competitive intelligence profile emerges, helping traditional retailers make better decisions regarding staffing and inventory distribution.
Local market responsiveness is yet another crucial advantage. Digital platforms often struggle to gain relevance in specific regions. Brick-and-mortar stores, on the other hand – being firmly rooted in physical space – can tailor their strategies to hyperlocal preferences gleaned from localized search data, regional social media trends, and area-specific online shopping patterns.
Implementation at Scale
The shift away from traditional retail to data-driven physical commerce doesn't require huge infrastructure investments. Thanks to modern web scraping tools, APIs, and analytics platforms, accessing market intelligence is now within everyone's reach.
During peak seasons, successful retailers are creating "digital war rooms" – teams made up of experts who track online signals and ensure quick responses across their store networks. These teams keep tabs on everything from competitor inventory to changes in social media sentiment, and share their insights with store managers. The latter can swiftly modify displays, pricing, and promotional focus as needed.
Staff training has been evolving to incorporate data literacy alongside more traditional retail skills. When floor staff understand that their smartphone-equipped customers have likely already researched products extensively online, they can position themselves as validators and facilitators rather than providers of information. Armed with the same web data their customers have access to, plus exclusive insights from their company's intelligence gathering, retail staff essentially become consultative partners in the overall purchase journey.
Will e-commerce ever push out traditional retail?
As shopping events like Black Friday, Prime Day, and others evolve, the line between online and offline retail is fading quite rapidly. Indeed, according to a recent
The future of retail will not be a story in which either side completely prevails over the other. Instead, we are likely to see a trend towards harmonization, achieved through flexible decision-making, adaptability, and a focus on customer experience.