With the holiday shopping frenzy right around the corner, brands need to do everything they can to win their customer’s share of wallets. ‘Tis the season shoppers have longer shopping lists and will likely buy products they’ve never purchased before for gift giving. This makes it even more critical for brands to make sure they make it easy for shoppers to find their product at the time right time, with the right deals and discounts. Watch the webinar with Karthik Bettadapura – CEO, Co-Founder at DataWeave & Vladimir Sushko– E-Retail Director at Anheuser-Busch InBev & learn about the key levers brands need to pull to get their Digital Shelf ready for the Holiday Season
Let’s start with Product Search…
Organic levers you can pull for Search Optimization
Key Highlights:
Product content is not a one-time fix. It’s seasonal. Seasons change and so does your product. Your content needs to reflect these dynamic changes.
Fact – Search rankings drop when product availability starts dipping. Lesser known fact – even after stock replenishing, your search ranking does not bounce back immediately. The opportunity cost of dwindling product stock is high.
Being optimized for the right keyword is good. Being optimized for the right keyword, with a higher ranking than your competitor is great!
Ratings & Reviews have a large correlation with search ranking and impact on sales.
We then asked the audience what factors they thought had the biggest impact on search rankings…
Listen to the experts answer questions that have been on everyone’s mind this Holiday Season!
Vladimir: How do you approach Search at Ab InBev?
Vladimir: Favourites have an impact, but is this something you can influence? If yes, how?
Vladimir: When it comes to growing your online sales via marketplaces what’s the one lever you pull most aggressively?
Karthik: Optimizing Share of Search on Marketplaces v/s traditional online retailers
Vladimir: What organic efforts do you use to improve your share of search?
Vladimir: When it comes to sponsored search do you use an always-on strategy or are ads spent strategically?
Karthik: Sponsored or Organic? What’s your advice to brands?
Vladimir: Are you tracking your competitor’s Digital Shelf?
Karthik: Which competitor KPIs do you recommend brands should track?
Vladimir: What’s your strategy to make sure you have a high share of search during Christmas – the busiest shopping season.
Karthik: What’s your advice for brands for the festive season?
Do you know if your brand is prepped and ready to make an impact during the biggest holiday season of the year? Or simply just wondering if your Digital Shelf is optimized with the right price, discounts, reviews, and keywords? Our team can DataWeave can help! Reach out to our Digital Shelf experts to learn more.
The exponential growth of eCommerce has forever changed holiday shopping as we know it. What was once led by the launch of Cyber Monday in 2005, has since expanded to ‘Cyber Five’ in 2018, now spans beyond an eight-week period, and is collectively the busiest digital shopping period of the year. Most retail websites have launched a ‘Thanksgiving Comes Early’ sales event for a mosaic of products, causing one to wonder how this ‘early start’ to holiday shopping will impact the traditional promotional cadence consumers have grown to expect to see launch closer to the holidays. Given today’s environmental challenges, threats of scarcity are also encouraging consumers to buy early, which could also impact traffic on the shopping days that have traditionally seen the highest sales volume from digital shoppers.
In the current environment, the onus will be on consumers to keep a watch for their categories of interest and buy them as and when they appear on sale in their favorite store, because there is no guarantee of sustained availability. Of course, they might return and buy at a different store if a better deal comes up, but there’s a time cost for the dollars saved. More broadly, there has been enough noise made about deals and discounts to keep consumer interest and curiosity going.
The early promotional start and heightened demand has influenced our team to get a jump start on our 2021 Black Friday analysis to look deeper at trends seen pre-Black Friday 2021 versus 2020. With this assessment, we can track how promotional prices and product availability rates may have changed throughout the event leading in to 2021 Cyber Five, and compare it to last year’s activity to understand how 2021 holiday sales may be impacted.
We reviewed popular holiday categories like apparel, electronics, and toys (for kids and pets), to have a broad sense of notable trends seen consistently throughout various, applicable marketplaces. What we found is a consistent decline in product availability over the last six months and as compared to last year, alongside an increase in prices.
We first analyzed availability changes for popular categories on Amazon, noted in the chart below, to understand how inventory may have changed throughout the year, and also compared to 2020. With the exception of batteries and solar power goods and books and maps, there appears to be consistency in greater product availability in 2021 versus 2020, but a slow decline in availability throughout 2021, leading into the holiday season.
Source: DataWeave Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability in-stock percentage from July 2020 through September 2021 for a sample size of 1000+ products on Amazon.com
When it came to our pricing analysis, we reviewed select categories on Amazon and Target.com, and found around fifty percent of products on both websites to have seen a price increase year-over-year, while only thirty-seven percent and sixteen percent of products saw a price decrease on Amazon and Target.com, respectively. We also see an increase in the manufacturer’s retail price (MRP) in 2021 versus 2020 for a very high proportion of products (forty-eight percent of products on Amazon and thirty-five percent of products on Target.com), but the discount percentages have remained the same.
Source: DataWeave Commerce Intelligence – Pricing Intelligence: MRP and promotional pricing for 1000+ products on Amazon and Target.com were analyzed from November 13th – 15th, 2021 versus Pre-Black Friday November 24th & 25th 2020
This indicates 2021 discounts may appear to be greater than or equivalent to 2020, but in reality, consumers will end up paying higher prices than they would have for the same items in 2020. The remainder of this article highlights our key findings found within each key category reviewed – Electronics, Apparel and Toys.
Electronics Category Analysis
The television category showcases a great example of how pricing fluctuations impact holiday promotional cadences. Based on our analysis, we found the average television price to have increased around seven percent from April to October 2021, as seen below and as noted within our analysis conducted with NerdWallet.
Source: DataWeave Commerce Intelligence – Pricing Intelligence: The change in average price captured for televisions sold on Amazon from May 2021 through October 2021.
In fact, on Amazon and Target.com, we see around eighty-four percent of the SKUs listed show both an MRP and promotional price increase in 2021 versus 2020 during pre-Black Friday times. One specific example found on Amazon is noted below for Samsung TV model QN65LS03TAFXZA, a 65 inch QLED TV that was priced at $1697 during this analysis at a fifteen percent discount from MRP, but was priced last year at $1497 without a discount from MRP. In essence, even though the TV offers a greater discount this year, it is actually more expensive than it was in 2020 at this same time of year.
Source: DataWeave Commerce Intelligence – Pricing Intelligence: MRP and promotional pricing analysis on Amazon.com comparing prices from November 13th – 15th, 2021 versus Pre-Black Friday November 24th & 25th 2020
Unlike TVs, the price of laptops has experienced a decrease over time based on our analysis conducted during the same timeframe, indicating these are a great buy for consumers this holiday season versus promotional offers seen in 2020.
Source: DataWeave Commerce Intelligence – Pricing Intelligence: The month-over-month change in average price captured for televisions sold on Amazon from April 2021 through September 2021.
Overall, our prediction is that within the electronics category, promotions during Cyber Five may be equivalent to last year’s offers, however, supply will be limited and the total spend versus last year will be greater to the consumer outside of Doorbuster deals offered on select models.
Apparel Category Analysis
The Luxury market is seeing a Roaring 20s-like feeling this season given the Covid-induced changes in work and lifestyle and higher disposable income. Therefore, our prediction is that prices for these goods are likely to remain flat, or offer very little discounts this season both due to supply constraints as well as higher demand. For example, our analysis on shoe pricing changes shows relative stability from April to October 2021.
Source: DataWeave Commerce Intelligence – Pricing Intelligence: The change in average price captured for shoes sold on Amazon from May 2021 through October 2021.
Given heightened demand and the Global shipping crisis, we anticipate luxury apparel categories to face out-of-stock challenges this holiday season, and therefore we also anticipate seeing less promotional activity for these items as well during Cyber Five 2021. To dive deeper into the severity of the impact, we looked at availability for clothing, accessories, and footwear categories from August 2020 until present to verify our thesis.
Focusing only on clothing, accessories, and footwear, these categories followed the same downward trending pattern regarding product availability decreases this year with a decline from June (seventy-six percent versus eighty-six percent in May 2021) to September 2021 (the lowest rate seen at sixty-eight percent availability), followed by a partial recovery in October and November (achieving seventy-seven percent availability).
Source: DataWeave’s Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability: 10k SKUs tracked across 11 retailers US websites (Farfetch, Brownsfashion, NetAPorter, EndClothing, 24s, Selfridges, Ssense, Harrods, Luisaviaroma, MyTheresa, MrPorter) tracked daily stock status in apparel categories; Availability is calculated as percent of instances when product is in stock against all instances tracked.
Not all recoveries were the same however, and given this, we predict accessories to have the lowest availability rate and greatest risk of facing out of stocks heading into Cyber Five. From May through November 2021, accessories availability continued to decline significantly from month to month, beginning at eighty-three percent in May and ending at seventy-four percent in November. Given this continued decline and with Black Friday right around the corner, we don’t anticipate inventory levels to increase enough to meet the increased holiday demand.
Source: DataWeave’s Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability: 10k SKUs tracked across 11 retailers US websites (Farfetch, Brownsfashion, NetAPorter, EndClothing, 24s, Selfridges, Ssense, Harrods, Luisaviaroma, MyTheresa, MrPorter) tracked daily stock status in apparel categories; Availability is calculated as percent of instances when product is in stock against all instances tracked.
Toys & Games Category Analysis
As noted by DigitalCommerce360, we also anticipate toys to be one of the greatest impacted categories this holiday season given the continued decline in overall availability for these items on Amazon.com, as one great example. Within our category analysis, we saw a steady decline in availability from March 2021 through June (eighty percent to sixty-one percent), followed by a period of stability from June through August (approximately sixty percent), followed by another decline from September through October, finally reaching the lowest availability of fifty-six percent (down twenty-four percent from March 2021).
Source: DataWeave’s Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability – hundreds of Toys & Games SKUs tracked on Amazon.com on a weekly basis from March 2021-October 2021
The biggest sub-category within the toys department on Amazon, Sports and Outdoor Play, followed the same trend as Toys and Games overall through June 2021, also reaching its lowest availability of fifty-six percent. Instead of continuing along that pattern, Sports and Outdoor Play started on a recovery path, ending at a relatively high availability level of sixty-seven percent in October, which is only five percent lower than its highest availability (seventy-two percent in March 2021). Games and Accessories, the second largest sub-category in Toys and Games, had a continuous decline starting with eighty-nine percent in March 2021, reaching its lowest availability of fifty-four percent in October.
Source: DataWeave’s Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability – hundreds of Toys & Games SKUs tracked on Amazon.com on a weekly basis from March 2021-October 2021
The sub-category Tricycles, Scooters and Wagons interestingly had its highest availability from July to September 2021 (around eighty percent), unlike other sub-categories which as a whole, had their lowest availability during the same timeframe. From September through October, there was a significant decline (fourteen percent), reaching its lowest availability of sixty-seven percent. The sub-category Babies & Toddlers started on a continuous decline from its highest availability of eighty percent in April to its lowest availability of fifty-six percent in October.
Source: DataWeave’s Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability – hundreds of Toys & Games SKUs tracked on Amazon.com on a weekly basis from March 2021-October 2021
*Please reach out to our Retail Analytics experts for access to sub-category details available within the above analysis on the Toys and Games category on Amazon.com.
Pet Toys Category Analysis
When it comes to in demand holiday toys, you can’t forget about the needs for gifts for our furry friends and family. We also tracked sub-categories such as dog, cat, and bird toys, following the same methodology as tracked within Toys and Games to track pet toy availability changes.
Source: DataWeave’s Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability – hundreds of Pet Toys SKUs tracked on Amazon.com on a weekly basis from March 2021-October 2021
Dog toys, the biggest sub-category out of the three pet toys analyzed, had high availability – ninety percent in March 2021, but started to decline reaching a low of sixty-five percent in October. There was a period of stability from April to August (averaging seventy-seven percent), followed by a significant decline of over thirteen percent in from September to October. Cat toys, the second largest sub-category, also had its highest availability in March (eighty-nine percent) followed by a steady decline to sixty-six percent in June, a recovery from July to August (achieving seventy-three percent), followed by another decline during September and October, reaching its lowest availability of sixty-three percent (down twenty-six percent from eighty-one percent in March). Interestingly, dog toys which has a product count eight times greater than cat toys, had higher availability than cat toys during each of the months considered during the analysis.
Source: DataWeave’s Commerce Intelligence – Product Availability – hundreds of Pet Toys SKUs tracked on Amazon.com on a weekly basis from March 2021-October 2021
In Conclusion
If we consider discounts and availability to be a good indicator of sales for the 2021 holiday season, with the Global shipping crisis looming over this year’s event, we expect retailers to have trouble keeping their inventory well stocked, which might affect growth rates. That being said, while discounts may be muted and popular items may come on very limited sales given constraints, we believe digital sales on Black Friday will see the highest year-over-year growth to date, given a number of supporting factors: scarcity threats increasing demand and the reason to buy, and consumers waiting to see if holiday offers surpass those see in the early start promotions, followed by the sudden rush to buy on Black Friday so as not to risk a given product being out of stock beyond this time period.
We also anticipate seeing a continued decline in product availability day-to-day as we progress throughout Cyber Five 2021. Given the analysis conducted on 2020 trends, (we tracked nearly a one percent decline in availability on Black Friday 2020 vs. Thanksgiving Day, followed by a two percent decline on Cyber Monday), our data indicates products went out-of-stock at a faster rate then also.
Ultimately only the digital-savvy retailers and brands will thrive during these opportune times, while others will continue to be in catch-up mode. Access to real-time marketplace insights can enable a first-to-market strategy, while having access to historical patterns can also help react faster to commonly seen future market factors, such as another pandemic or Global shipping crisis. These types of insights also support day-to-day operations, enabling retailers and brands to accelerate eCommerce growth, determine systems to distinguish their online strategies, discover efficiencies and drive profitable growth in an intensifying competitive environment.
Continue to follow us in the coming weeks to see the insights we track through Cyber Five 2021, and be sure to reach out to our Retail Analytics experts for access to more details regarding the above analysis.
Customers expect personalization. Unless they have a seamless experience on your online channels, they’ll leave for a different retailer. Retail analytics can solve these problems for merchants looking to increase customer satisfaction and sales. It provides insights into inventory, sales, customers, and other essential aspects crucial for decision-making. Retail analytics also encompasses several granular fields to create a broad picture of a retail business’s health and sales, along with improvement areas.
Big data analytics in the retail market
Big data analytics in the retail market is expected to reach USD 13.26 billion by the end of 2026, registering a CAGR of 21.20% during the forecast period (2021-2026). The growth of analytics in retail depicts how it can help companies run businesses more efficiently, make data-backed choices, and deliver improved customer service.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the top 10 analytics that retailers are using to gain a competitive advantage in accurately evaluating business & market performance.
Top 10 of Retail Analytics You Must Know
1. Assortment
Assortment planning allows retailers to choose the right breadth (product categories) and depth (product variation within each category) for their retail or online stores. Assortment management has grown beyond simple performance metrics like total sales or rotation numbers. Instead, retail analytics offers a comprehensive analysis of product merchandise and an estimated number of units at the push of a button. Retailers that effectively apply assortment analytics can enjoy increased gross margins and prevent significant losses from overstocks sold at discounted prices or out-of-stock inventory leading their customers to buy from competitors.
It also helps retailers gain insights into the trendy and discoverable brands and products on all e-commerce websites across the globe. They can boost sales by making sure they have an in-demand product assortment. They can also track pricing information and attributes common across popular products to drive their pricing and promotion strategies.
2. Inventory Management
An inadequately maintained inventory is every retailer’s worst nightmare. It represents a poor indicator of inadequate demand for a product and leads to a loss in sales. Data can help companies answer issues like what to store and what to discard. It’s beneficial to discard or increase offers on products that are not generating sales and keep replenished stocks of popular items.
In 2020, the estimated value for out-of-stock items ($1.14 trillion) was double that of overstock items ($626 billion). A similar trend was especially prominent in grocery stores, where out-of-stock items were worth five times more than overstock items.
Unavailability of high-selling products can lead to reduced sales, ultimately generating incorrect data for future forecasting and producing skewed demand and supply insights. Retailers can now use analytics to identify which products are in demand, which are moving slowly, and which ones contribute to dead stock. They can know in real-time if a high-demand product is unavailable at a specific location and take action to increase the stock. Retailers can use this historical data to predict what to stock, at what place, time, and cost to maintain and optimize revenue. It helps satisfy consumer needs, prevents loss of sales, reduces inventory cost, and streamlines the complete supply chain.
3. Competitive Intelligence
Market intelligence & Competitive Insights
The ability to accurately predict trends after the global pandemic and with an unknown economic future is becoming the cornerstone for successful retailers. Smart retailers know how important it is to Pandemic-Proof their retail strategy with Market Intelligence & Competitive Insights
With 90% of Fortune 500 companies using competitive intelligence, it’s an essential tool to gain an advantage over industry competitors. Competitive Intelligence allows you to gather and analyze information about your competitors and understand the market–providing valuable insights that you can apply to your own business. A more strategic competitor analysis will explain brand affinities and provide insights on what to keep in stock and when to start promotions. Customer movement data will also give you access to where your customers are shopping.
4. Fraud Detection
Fraud Detection
Retailers have been in a constant struggle with fraud detection and prevention since time immemorial. Fraudulent products lead to substantial financial losses and damage the reputation of both brands and retailers. Every $1 of fraud now costs U.S. retail and eCommerce merchants $3.60, a 15% growth since the pre-Covid study in 2019, which was $3.13. Retail Analytics acts as a guardian against fraudsters by constantly monitoring, identifying, and flagging fraud products and sellers.
5. Campaign Management
Some of the challenges of the retail industry are that it’s seasonal, promotion-based, highly competitive, and fast-moving. In today’s competitive marketplace, consumers compare prices and expect personalized shopping experiences. Campaign management allows marketing teams to plan, track, and analyze marketing strategies for promoting products and attracting audiences. Retail analytics can help businesses predict consumer behavior, improve decision-making across the company, and determine the ROI of their marketing efforts.
According to Invesp, 64% of marketing executives “strongly agree” that data-driven marketing is crucial in the economy. Retail analytics can help businesses analyze their data to learn about their customers with target precision. With predictive analysis, retailers can design campaigns that encourage consumers to interact with the brand, move down the sales funnel, and ultimately convert.
6. Behavioral Analytics
Retail firms often look to improve customer conversion rates, personalize marketing campaigns to increase revenue, predict and avoid customer churn, and lower customer acquisition costs. Data-driven insights on customer shopping behaviors can help companies tackle these challenges. However, several interaction points like social media, mobile, e-commerce sites, stores, and more, cause a substantial increase in the complexity and diversity of data to accumulate and analyze.
Insider Intelligence forecasts that m-eCommerce volume will rise at 25.5% (CAGR) until 2024, hitting $488 billion in sales, or 44% of all e-commerce transactions.
Data can provide valuable insights, for example, recognizing your high-value customers, their motives behind the purchase, their buying patterns, behaviors, and which are the best channels to market to them and when. Having these detailed insights increases the probability of customer acquisition and perhaps drives their loyalty towards you.
7. Pricing
Competitive pricing in retail
Market trends fluctuate at an unprecedented pace, and pricing has become as competitive as it’s ever been. The only way to keep up with competitive pricing in retail is to use retail analytics that enables retailers to drive more revenue & margin by pricing products competitively.
A report from Inside Big Data found companies experience anywhere from 0.5% up to 17.1% in margin loss purely because of pricing errors. Pricing analytics provides companies with the tools and methods to perceive better, interpret and predict pricing that matches consumer behavior. Appropriate pricing power comes from understanding what your consumers want, which offers they respond to, how and where they shop, and how much they will pay for your products.
In 2021, the price optimization segment is anticipated to own the largest share of the overall retail analytics market. Retailers can identify gaps and set alerts to track changes across crucial SKUs or products with pricing analytics. Knowing your customer’s price perception will increase sales and also allow you to design promotions that’ll attract customers. Pricing analytics also accounts for factors like demographics, weather forecasting, inventory levels, real-time sales data, product movement, purchase history, and much more to arrive at an excellent price.
8. Sales and Demand Forecasting
Sales and demand forecasting allow retailers to plan for levels of granularity—monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly—and use the insights in their marketing campaigns and business decisions. The benefits of a granular forecast are apparent since retailers don’t have to bank on historical data of previous clients and customers to predict revenues. Retailers can plan their strategies and promotions that suit their customer’s demands.
With sales and demand forecasting, retailers can also consider the most recent, historical, and real-time data to predict potential future revenue. Sales and demand analytics can predict buying patterns and market trends based on socioeconomic and demographic conditions.
9. Customer Service and Experience
With the development of eCommerce, more and more customers prefer to browse and interact with the product before purchasing online. They look for better deals and discounts across stores and platforms. 3 out of 5 consumers say retail’s investment in technology is improving their online and in-store shopping experiences. To enhance merchandising and marketing strategies, retailers can gather data on customer buying journeys to understand their in-store and online experiences.
Retailers can run test campaigns to know the impact on sales and use historical data to predict consumers’ needs based on their demographics, buying patterns, and interests. Retail analytics help retailers to bring more efficiency in promotions and drive impulsive purchases and cross-selling.
10. Promotion
Analyze Competitors’ Promotions
Promotions are potent sales drivers and need to be cleverly targeted towards specific customers with precise deals to generate outstanding sales. Retail analytics allows companies to study their customers and competitors to a vastly elevated level.
To be an industry leader, retail companies not only have to understand their customers, but they must also analyze competitors’ promotions to improve their marketing strategies. Analyzing your competitor’s promotional banners, ads, and marketing campaigns are no more associated with imitation.
With data analytics and AI, retailers can watch their competitors’ commercialization strategies. It can uncover vital information about their target audience, sales volume fluctuations, popular seasonal product types, product attributes of popular items, and significant industry trends. Knowing exactly which products and brands are popular among your competitor’s campaigns can help retailers improve their promotional strategies.
Conclusion
The benefits of retail analytics are spread across various verticals, from merchandising, assortment, inventory management, and marketing to reducing losses. The need for analytics has become even more apparent considering the growing eCommerce platforms, changing customer buying journeys, and the complexity of the industry. Understanding which products sell best among which customers will help retailers to deliver an optimized shopping experience.
Want to drive profitable growth by making smarter pricing, promotions, and product merchandising decisions using real-time retail insights? DataWeave’s AI-powered Competitive Intelligence can help! Reach out to our Retail Analytics experts to know more.
With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, beauty and cosmetics companies are exploring new possibilities. According to a report by Avendus, the global beauty and personal care market are expected to touch US$725 billion by 2025 and the young Indian market is expected to grow to $28 billion by then. This segment is a space of opportunity and today we have more than 80 Indian brands in this domain.
D2C beauty brand logos
While technology in this space plays a very important role, Artificial Intelligence (AI) amongst everything else is giving the beauty industry a makeover. This is because, AI can create an impact on all stages of the beauty value chain — from research & development to supply chain management to product selection, marketing, and more! Resonating this thought, Chaitanya Nallan, CEO & Co-Founder, SkinKraft Laboratories mentions “As a digital-first brand, we sell across multiple e-commerce platforms as well as through our own website. Thus, it is very important that we track and maintain inventory across all channels in real-time to avoid stock-outs and loss of sales. We use AI for this. We have built an in-house data tracking dashboard that pulls in inventory information from all warehouses and maps them against sales to give us an accurate estimate of days of inventory across all SKUs and across all platforms. This information directly feeds into our procurement dashboard and also helps the marketing team to create the right sales strategy.”
Stock availability is crucial to driving sales. If you need help tracking your online inventory – DataWeave can help give you a near real-time view of your product stock status across marketplaces.
With AI being a powerful technology wand, here is how it can drive the future of beauty brands within the D2C segment in India.
Making Virtual Product trials a reality
Virtual Product Trial
Augmented Reality (AR) is a prevalent term and many companies are already using it on an everyday basis. More commonly, the Snapchat and Instagram filters we use are all powered by AR. In a similar vein, virtual images can be laid over actual images in real-time using AI. And keeping this concept handy, beauty brands are bringing to the front the AR-powered ‘virtual mirrors’ that let consumers try on cosmetic products in real-time. Modiface by L’Oréal is a perfect example of VR-mirrors, which has pioneered the AR-powered makeup try-ons in the market. These virtual mirrors use AI algorithms to detect the user’s face through a camera by focal points and map the face. Then using AR, images of makeup are adjusted according to the terms obtained and overlaid over the features on the face giving consumers a virtual feel of what they’d look like wearing the product.
Virtual Try-on
Much recently, Indian brand Lakme has made ‘virtual try on’ possible by creating a smart mirror on its official website that allows customers to watch their reflection, try on different shades, and customize those shades according to their preferences. Shade matching until a few years back was an entirely on-ground phenomenon and customers visiting a local cosmetics store were able to choose and match the shade of compact, eye shadow, and lipstick against their true skin tone. Today AI can allow you to narrow down on products based on a virtual shade card, put them against your skin in real-time.
Make it Truly Personalised
Every customer is unique, and one size does not fit all. Everyone has a personalized beauty regime they follow & understanding this could be the key to success for beauty brands. For this reason, the future of beauty lies in harnessing AI and AR solutions to tailor the beauty shopping experience to match the needs of the individual consumer. This not only enhances digital engagement but also increases purchasing confidence which in turn helps brands drive conversion and brand loyalty.
Pre-pandemic, offline beauty advisors played a consultative role when customers were making purchase decisions. A lot of this has moved online – take for instance Olay. It launched an online “Skin Advisor” app based on a deep-learning algorithm that analyses a consumer’s skin using a simple selfie! Armed with information on their skin type, customers can make an informed, personalized purchase that’s right for their specific skin type.
Skin Advisor App
Understanding customer preferences and using data from their past purchases also help with personalized marketing in a big way. “Data-driven personalization gives brands insight into what their customers are interested in. We integrate this data into our marketing campaigns and deliver specific, personalized, and relevant content. This way, we make sure to target the right audience with the right messaging. This, in turn, helps us increase engagement and retain customers. Moreover, this combined data, allows us to get repeat sales through upselling and cross-selling. Further, knowing customers beyond just simple demographics helps us improve our targeting and helps us predict future behaviour. We’d like to know, for instance, if a customer clicked on our advertisement, liked, or commented on our social media product displays, signed up to our email list, etc. These analytics reveal a customer’s interest. Combine it with demographics – and you get a sense of what the customer is interested in,” Dhruv Madhok, Co-Founder, ARATA highlights.
Boost Product Development
Social listening
AI algorithms can be used to study and analyse customer feedback. The algorithm works towards interpreting customer comments, reviews, and feedback on a brand’s website, social media channels, and other online platforms. Artificial Intelligence can also decode and analyse questionnaires and feedback forms that the customers may have responded to online or offline.
The beauty and personal care industry is largely driven by usage and customer preferences, so gauging how customers feel about key products can help businesses create & develop products that customers will most likely prefer to buy. For instance, reputed beauty brand Avon recently mentioned that it developed the True 5-in-1 Lash Genius Mascara based on actual consumer feedback! They used machine learning & artificial intelligence to read, filter, process & rank thousands of online consumer comments to determine the top features they crave in a mascara. Using this customer gathered intelligence, they developed a unique product that consumers we’re “asking for”!
True 5-in-1 Lash Genius Mascara by beauty brand Avon
More and more brands are listening to customer responses closely to give way to new products, bring in tweaks to their existing basket, and innovate further. “Our ORM team is leading the knowledge accumulation as far as social listening is concerned. They are not just responsible for responding to customer queries, they are also instrumental in highlighting key insights based on user behaviour being observed,” Chaitanya of SkinKraft Laboratories further asserts.
Bombay Shaving Company too with its data-centric culture leverages customer responses for decision making & product development. “In-home personal care and hygiene exploded during the pandemic. We used data analytics to explore different dimensions of in-home experience-driven needs (new usage occasions, need for convenience and DIY, etc.). We listened to our customers & were able to introduce our women’s brand, with innovative hair removal products in a big way during this period. Which today contributes to a significant percentage of our business,” Shantanu Deshpande, Founder & CEO, Bombay Shaving Company mentions.
Given the scope and scale of the beauty and personal care industry that is major ‘usage’ driven, Artificial Intelligence with its diverse potential can bring a paradigm shift in the industry. AI can help not only with virtual trials, personalization, listening in to customers’ feedback but also with monitoring a brand’s Digital Shelf. Brands can amplify their online sales by tracking Digital Shelf KPIs like share of search & product visibility, pricing & discounting, product content, availability & assortment. Reach out to our Digital Shelf experts to learn more.
The festival of lights symbolized the victory of light over darkness, good over evil & knowledge over ignorance. Over the years, Diwali has become all that and more. It has single-handedly become the biggest shopping season in India! Splurging on a new Smart TV or Fridge, or a furniture upgrade at home has become customary during Diwali. Not to forget buying gold and gifts for all your loved ones!
As more and more people are doing their Diwali shopping online, we decided to look at the data, see what people were browsing and buying. And more importantly, which brands spruced up their Digital Shelf & put their best foot forward this Diwali Season.
Methodology
We tracked the first 250 products on Amazon & Flipkart against specific keyword searches & product categories.
Share of Search (SoS): The percentage of products that appeared on the search results page on Amazon or Flipkart belonging to a brand, against a specific keyword or category.
Dates of Crawl during the Flipkart Big Billion Day / Amazon Great Indian Festival. – Pre-sale period: 1st October 2021 – Sale Period: 3rd to 10th October 2021 – Post Sale Period: 11th – 18th October 2021
India’s E-Commerce Gold Rush
YouGov reported that almost three in ten urban Indians (28%) are planning to spend on gold in the next 3 months. Seven in ten (69%) of these prospective gold buyers agreed with the statement, “Diwali is the best time to buy gold”, highlighting their inclination to spend during the festive season. Also, the same survey showed that Tanishq was the most trusted gold brand. With Kalyan Jewellers, Malabar Gold & Diamonds and PC Jewellers also making it to the top 5 list.
While traditionally Gold was mostly sold offline, that trend has fast changed. We tracked brands that had the highest Share of Search against the keyword “Gold Coin” on both Amazon & Flipkart to see if Tanishq, Malabar Gold, PC Jewellers – the big trusted names in jewellery were making their mark online.
Search Insights for Gold Coin
On Amazon, MMTC-PAMP (a joint venture between Switzerland-based PAMP SA & MMTC Ltd, a Government of India undertaking) and Kundan had the highest visibility for the keyword “Gold Coin” at 10%, followed by Malabar Gold at 9%. (Refer to above graph of Search Visibility on Amazon)
MMTC-PAMP used the help of Sponsored ads to get this visibility. They sponsored 9 products during the sale, while ACPL, the largest supplier of silver in India sponsored 26 products and New Delhi-based PC Jewellers sponsored 12 products. (Refer to above graph of Sponsored Products on Amazon)
As recently as 2 weeks ago, MMTC-PAMP launched their e-commerce portal following in the footsteps of other jewellery brands. According to a report by the World Gold Council, the jewellery industry went through a massive slowdown amid the pandemic and prepping their e-commerce & digital strategies are likely going to be the only way forward.
On Flipkart, PC Jewellers, Malabar Gold & Kundan occupied the top 3 spots on the search results page. While PC Jewellers sponsored 12 products on Amazon, on Flipkart they sponsored zero. Malabar Gold on the other hand sponsored a whopping 25 products on Flipkart! Interestingly Malabar Gold sponsored no products on Amazon for the keyword Gold Coin. (Refer to above graph of Sponsored Products on Flipkart)
Unboxing the love – Branded Diwali Gift Hampers
Branded-Diwali-Gift-Hampers
Now let’s talk about Diwali Gifts. How often have you thought of buying someone a Diwali gift but had absolutely no idea what to get them? You’re not alone! A lot of consumers would simply run a search for “Diwali Gift Hampers” or Diwali Gifts” in the hope to stumble across a great gifting idea and make an instant purchase! Smart brands who know this make sure their products have organic or sponsored visibility against these keywords
OnAmazon, Tied Ribbons, a D2C gift and Décor company had the highest number of Sponsored products (15) against the keyword Diwali Gift followed by the iconic Brand Archies with (14) products. Flipkarthad a whole bunch of smaller brands and sellers optimizing their products for this keyword. Some bigger, more known brands like Chaayos, Cadbury, D2C Tea brand Vahdam did have visibility for the keywords “Diwali Gift Hampers/ Diwali Gifts” but they were way down on the list, at the bottom of the search results page, or on Page 2.
Was this a missed opportunity for them?
Give your home a festive upgrade!
Diwali is a perfect time to upgrade or buy new electrical appliances for your home. Great prices, new product launches, and an unmatched festive feeling make it even more ideal to make new purchases. If you’re eyeing smart innovative electrical appliances for your home this year and decided to go make your purchase during the Flipkart Big Billion Day or Amazon Great Indian Festival, let’s take a look at which brands made sure they showed up right on top in your online search.
We tracked search visibility for 5 keywords in the home appliance space – Smart TV, Washing Machine, Microwave, Air Conditioner & Refrigerators to see which brands had the highest share of search
Brands with the Highest Share of Search on Amazon
On Amazon, both Samsung & LG had high visibility across all products except Air Conditioners!
For ACs, Voltas had the highest share of search even though they sponsored 0 products! And that’s definitely noteworthy. So what really gave them the edge and put them in this winning position?
We took a look at their product reviews to draw an analysis. Voltas ACs had close to 10k reviews! The highest in the AC category. Ratings & Reviews play a key role in helping brands drive their Digital Shelf experience. Customers trust user-generated content more than information brands share with them. Also, Amazon’s A9 algorithm prioritizes products with better reviews & shows them higher up in search – a low-cost & organic way for brands to get to the top without spending money on Sponsored ads!
Most loved Air Conditioner brand
When it comes to washing machines, Lloyd & White Westinghouse (trademark by Electrolux) sponsored the maximum number of products in the category, this gave them the highest Sponsored SoS (13%) on the first page.
While their sponsored visibility was high, their overall SoS was low which is why they didn’t organically feature in the top 5. Sponsoring products is a great but expensive way to artificially boost product visibility during sale periods. Brands need to go the Voltas route by optimizing their reviews & rating or content, to organically gain and sustain product visibility.
… & here are the brands that made it to the top on Flipkart.
Brands with the Highest Share of Search-on-FLIPKART
Gift-worthy gizmos!
Buy the latest gadgets and pamper yourself this Diwali or gift them to your loved ones! You could be looking to upgrade your laptop, or buying a fancy DSLR or Smartwatch, buying it online may be your best bet. Discounts have dwindled over the years but you may still get the most lucrative discounts online. Let’s look at the discounts offered on Amazon & Flipkart for some gift-worthy gizmos like Laptops, Cameras, Smart Watches & Headphones this festive season.
The platform that offered the highest number of products in their catalog at a discount
On Amazon, during the sale, the headphones category offered a 75% of products on discount as compared to the pre-sales period. That number was just around 51% for cameras. Far more number of products were discounted on Flipkart – 87% for headphones & laptops. And cameras 77%. So if you were looking to shop for gadgets around Diwali, Flipkart would’ve been a better bet.
Let’s look at which platform offered the highest percentage of discounts on products.
Discounts were higher across all 4 product categories!
Apart from more products being discounted on Flipkart, Flipkart also offered higher discounts across these 4 categories. Discounts were higher across all 4 product categories!
Do you know if your brand is prepped and ready to make an impact on a Big Festival Sale Day? Or simply just wondering if your Digital Shelf is optimized with the right price, discounts, reviews and keywords? Our team can DataWeave can help! Reach out to our Digital Shelf experts to learn more.
Around 30 percent of electronic products across Amazon and 19 percent across Flipkart continued to be sold without any discount during October which is ironically seen as the festive month where the two companies make tall claims about deals and discounts offered around Indian festivals.
Out of the 70-80 percent products where discounts were available, Flipkart surprisingly turned out to be more generous than Amazon during the period under review.
As per the data exclusively shared with Moneycontrol by digital commerce analytics platform DataWeave, Flipkart on an average offered 26.3 percent discounts across the categories mentioned as compared to Amazon which had just 10.6 percent discounts.
What makes it more interesting is that while Amazon was officially running its flagship sale The Great Indian Festival for the entire month, Flipkart had concluded its The Big Billion Days on October 10th itself.
However, it looks like the latter was in no mood to let the competition have it all.
The pattern is slightly different from the week-long data which was reported by Moneycontrol last month. During the first week of the festive sale, both the two companies offered no additional discounts across 30 percent of the products across the electronics category which houses products like refrigerators, air-conditioners, and laptops.
While Amazon continues to stick to the trend, Flipkart seems to have become a little aggressive there.
On a product level, across air conditioners, while Flipkart offered discounts across 84 percent of the products, Amazon offered it only across 73.1 percent of products. Laptops saw at least 87 percent of products on Flipkart having discounts while on Amazon it was across 76.3 percent.
Smart TV interestingly had a different pattern. While Amazon had 72.1 percent of the products at a discounted price, Flipkart had just 63.7 percent of smart TV’s on discount.
Interestingly, on Amazon and Flipkart at least 2.5 percent and 3.1 percent of electronic products also had a price hike during the period under review respectively.
This is a far cry from discounts in the 60-70 percent range that the two companies advertise across electronics and appliances categories on their platforms during the sale period to lure customers.
“Sellers decide the price of their products on Amazon. Our investment in technology and infrastructure has allowed them to save costs and consistently offer great prices to customers. Our partnership with banks, sellers, and ecosystem partners allow us to add further value through exchange offers, no-cost EMI, instant bank discounts among others, ” said an Amazon spokesperson.
Flipkart did not respond to queries.
Bengaluru-based Dataweave counts Japanese ad-tech firm FreakOut Group and domestic venture capital firm Blume Ventures among its investors. The data was shared exclusively with Moneycontrol.
The price comparisons were made with rates displayed on October 1, the last business-as-usual day before the sale started and the month-long sale period beginning October 3.
For this analysis, DataWeave crawled pages of the electronics category, which houses products, including air-conditioners, cameras, headphones, laptops, microwave ovens, refrigerators, smart televisions, smartwatches and washing machines. The firm scanned 2,285 products on Amazon and 3,131 on Flipkart.
Counterfeits pose a dangerous threat to any retail brand. Since every single sale is a pivotal branding opportunity, especially for young, burgeoning eCommerce brands, an online marketplace flooded with counterfeits can be particularly dangerous. One in five customers will boycott a brand after mistakenly purchasing a counterfeit product, and that’s not the kind of ratio that any retailer –– from the smallest Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) site to the behemoths like Amazon –– can afford to ignore.
In the age of online reviews, it’s especially dangerous to have counterfeits floating around. Customers that have a bad experience with a counterfeit can take to the internet to disparage your brand without ever actually interacting with your company or trying your product. That’s why consistent and thorough content audits are paramount to ensuring your brand’s authentic products are highly discoverable, and brand protection and governance processes are in place to safeguard brand integrity across all applicable eCommerce websites.
The Holiday Counterfeit Boom
The holidays are a time when customers search for gifts for their friends and family, which means exploring brands outside of their usual fare. Many consumers will be exposed to your brand’s Digital Shelf for the first time over the holiday season, creating an opportunity for brand growth. But if you don’t have eCommerce brand protection initiatives in place, the holidays can be detrimental to brand positioning, customer trust, and your bottom line.
As consumers boost their online spending and web traffic increases over the holidays, so does the likelihood of them purchasing counterfeit goods online. eMarketer predicts that retail eCommerce sales will comprise almost 20 percent of total holiday retail sales this year. As such, there will also be a surge in counterfeit inventory. So, this is an ideal time to invest in a brand protection solution to help you stay ahead of unauthorized sellers entering the marketplace.
Brand Integrity Helps Suppliers Save
Implementing a solution to mitigate the risks of counterfeit products should be at the top of every retailer’s “To-Do” list this year. However, for many retailers, this means manually reviewing numerous websites and third-party marketplaces for violations. Not only is manually reviewing content, images, and seller authenticity a time-consuming process, but it also leaves a lot of room for human error – making it possible for counterfeits to slip through the cracks and into the hands of unsuspecting customers. Not to mention your time should be spent fulfilling orders and increasing customer satisfaction during the high-traffic holiday season, not distracted by monitoring counterfeits.
Fortunately, that’s not the only way to identify counterfeits and protect your brand online. An effective content auditing tool can help you monitor, detect, and determine systems to identify and act on identified violations, saving time and labor hours normally spent on manual auditing processes. Content audit software also often contains helpful features to help you run your business more strategically by monitoring online hygiene factors like product titles and description. It works across all online channels by highlighting content gaps, which can then be remedied to improve product visibility and conversions. Through online content optimization, you can save money (in unnecessary labor costs), improve your Share of Search, and increase sales and share, with a modest up-front investment.
Brand Value Protection Boosts Consumer Confidence
Brand image protection doesn’t just protect retailers, it also protects customers from unintentionally buying dangerous counterfeit goods. Counterfeiting has skyrocketed during the pandemic. The International Chamber of Commerce reports that, by 2022, counterfeit goods will be a $4.2 trillion industry, and global damage from counterfeit goods is projected to exceed $323 billion. Studies show one in four customers has unknowingly purchased a counterfeit item online.
As counterfeits increase in number, so does the risk of counterfeit consumption by unwitting consumers. Counterfeit goods are as dangerous as they are ubiquitous. Customs and Border Patrol has found ingredients such as cadmium, arsenic, lead, and cyanide inside of counterfeit cosmetics. Consumers are aware of these risks. So, as a retailer, you need to be able to reassure customers that they can trust the authenticity of the goods they are purchasing at your online store.
A counterfeit detection tool can help you identify fakes and image replicas across multiple online marketplaces, so you can get fake products delisted. Automated counterfeit solutions can increase customer satisfaction in their purchasing experience, since they know they’re getting an authentic product right off the bat. This type of online brand protection creates increased brand loyalty over time, as well as more positive first-time product interactions.
Making a Measurable Impact: A Counterfeit Detection Case Study
Classic Accessories is a leading manufacturer of high-quality furnishings and accessories. The company’s investment in a counterfeit detection tool paid off in spades for their organization. After noticing a surge in counterfeit versions of their goods being sold via online, global marketplaces, they decided they needed to change their manual counterfeit and image violation detection process to an automated one to proactively respond to concerned activity in a timely manner.
Their goal was to achieve streamlined, actionable insights across all retail websites to account for varied violation submission processes, and to reduce the timespan in which insights were generated, ultimately eliminating the need to conduct daily, manual audits. They partnered with DataWeave, who built out a fully customized program to automate Classic Accessories’ content inventory management process, and identified SKU-level violations by matching names and images in diverse online marketplaces.
During the first three months of onboarding, Classic Accessories was able to detect more than 25,000 violations, submitting notices to each marketplace, and even achieved a 100% removal rate across all Amazon sources. Additionally, they also achieved their goal of saving time (22 hours per week) in automation processes, translating to a $68,000 savings opportunity in labor costs.
Closing Thoughts
Prioritizing your online brand protection strategy is imperative to growing your online presence and achieving customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Fortunately, there are options like DataWeave’s brand protection tool available to help curate your online content, provide consistency across online channels, and improve consumer confidence by addressing and removing counterfeit violations. Implementing the right solution can help find counterfeit products in real-time to keep your brand safe –– and your reputation intact –– throughout the 2021 holiday season. The right brand protection software will provide both Brand Protection and Content Audits, so your brand is optimized from every possible angle for truly competitive results.
Discounts may have been scaled down as the e-commerce market matures and the government looks out for alleged malpractices.
Radhika Subramanium made umpteen trips to the shiny black Bosch mixer-grinder on her phone in the last few weeks. She put it in her shopping cart and waited for the festive season sale to begin, hoping to get a good deal. At the end of the day, who doesn’t want to save a few extra bucks?
But, on October 3, the big day when e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart locked horns and launched The Great Indian Festival and Big Billion Days, Subramaniam was sorely disappointed. Her cart barely showed any discount. She bought the appliance anyway because it was needed, but her excitement was gone.
It was largely the same story for Vaibhav Jaiswal. His Boat headphones didn’t even fetch a Rs 200 discount.
Revati Krishna, in fact, checked out with zero discount on the sit-and-bounce ball she had picked up for her nephew.
Subramanium, Jaiswal and Krishna are among hundreds of Indians who realised that e-commerce sales no longer offer the lucrative discounts they used to, except for select products such as mobile phones.
On average, 30 percent of the products sold across the electronics category which houses products like refrigerators, air-conditioners and laptops on Amazon and Flipkart had no discount during their week-long festive sale season, according to a study by a data analytics company.
Higher prices
Interestingly, 8-11 percent of the products across categories such as washing machines, microwave ovens and laptops even showed higher prices during the sale across the two platforms.
The price comparisons were made with rates displayed on October 1, the last business-as-usual day before the sale started.
The data was compiled by Bengaluru-based digital commerce analytics platform DataWeave, which counts Japanese ad-tech firm FreakOut Group and domestic venture capital firm Blume Ventures among its investors. The data was shared exclusively with Moneycontrol.
The discounts were lean even on lower-priced products. Amazon dangled a 6.4 percent discount on air-conditioners priced at Rs 33,500-34,000 during the sale, while Flipkart offered barely a 5 percent discount, according to the data.
This is a far cry from discounts in the 60-70 percent range that used to be advertised across electronics and appliances categories on online marketplaces.
For this analysis, DataWeave trawled the first five pages of the electronics category, which houses products, including air-conditioners, cameras, headphones, laptops, microwave ovens, refrigerators, smart televisions, smartwatches, and washing machines. The firm scanned 1,184 products.
Gone are the days when discounts were offered for habit-forming. According to experts, with the markets maturing, companies no longer fancy hoarding deal hunters.
“As people have got used to buying online, the companies have decided to focus on convenience rather than price,” said Harish HV, managing partner at ECube Investment Advisors. “You won’t even find a significant difference between the price of a product across the two marketplaces Amazon and Flipkart, which have a clear duopoly. It will go on like this unless a big new entrant starts disrupting prices again.”
As per recent research conducted by Deloitte, approximately 81% of consumers use reviews to make purchase decisions. Reviews work like social testimonials. They are credible recommendations, as a vote of confidence from an existing customer. And when satisfied customers express themselves through the right words, automatically your product gets a boost.
In case you’re thinking, ‘who has time to read through each and every review?’ Put a pause to your thought, because more than 70% of people regularly or occasionally read online reviews, and 19% of US shoppers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Online reviews matter and for brands that are selling online, this is becoming a big deciding ground, contributing to sales.
Let’s go a little deeper and take a look at why good Ratings and Reviews are important for your eCommerce sales.
1. Use your customer’s voice as a marketing tool!
Reviews have emerged as a new and effective product promotional tool that never fails to attract the right audience. Even standalone, reviews or word-of-mouth from real users have always been the hook for consumers, so using reviews in your marketing amps up the impact. And the best part is, that it is absolutely free and user-generated!
Here’s how Fabletics in the UK is using reviews for marketing – they’ve brought these customer testimonials right onto their website homepage! These attention-grabbing reviews showcase the voice of their existing customers and serve as the main influence for future customers that visit their website and want to know more about their brand offerings.
Fabletics website
Using reviews in Search ads is another really impactful way to amplify your customer’s voice and confidence in your brand. Here’s a sample of how we at DataWeave could use our fantastic G2 reviews to build out a Search ad.
G2 Review
2. Use Reviews & Ratings to influence buying decisions
Product page from Suja website
Display your reviews upfront. Help consumers make their purchase decision easier. Take for instance Suja, a cold-pressed juice brand. Suja converts user ratings and reviews into scores for each of their organic drinks and displays it right below the product, so at one glance users know which products have high reviews and which don’t. This further eases purchase decisions and every customer can decide on the variant right at the product page and then add it to the cart if it meets their expectations.
3. Positive reviews impact your brand’s conversion rate
Experts say that 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates. McKinsey has attempted to quantify the relationship between reviews and conversion rates by analyzing reviews and ratings across the 70 highest-selling categories on a major online platform. After tracking hundreds of thousands of individual SKUs over a two-year time span, they found out that the correlation between star ratings and product sales was positive in 55 of the 70 categories they examined. In fact, a jump in rating was also seen to add to the conversion rates growing. Loyalty drives ratings and that, in turn, leads to positive conversions.
Negative or fewer ratings can directly impact sales. We at DataWeave can help Brands adapt to consumer feedback by tracking their reviews and rating.
4. Use honest & transparent reviews to build trust, including negative reviews.
Take for instance this detailed review for a Lancôme mascara on Ulta Beauty. It not only gives the user a ready guide to the product they are eyeing but also makes the brand come out very transparent and believable, courtesy of the cons & negative reviews on display. This helps build a relationship of trust with customers across the board. Various studies have been conducted where consumers said when looking at reviews of businesses, they would trust the company less if there were no negative reviews on display. And they said the probability of every single customer having a four or five-star experience just isn’t believable – this would cause suspicion and has a strong potential of turning them away from making a purchase. Consumers clearly want the real story about a brand or business and not just a rosy picture.
5 Ratings and reviews can boost SEO
Use ratings and reviews to structure the entire listing
Online reviews are estimated to make up 10% of the criteria Google algorithms use when displaying search results. Every brand understands the importance of putting SEO-optimized content online via blogs & an array of other content marketing activities. Reviews can contribute to that cause too! User-generated content like reviews can work as a ready stream of optimized content, which Google can crawl to rank products higher in search. What is interesting is that buyers when posting a review for products are bound to mention the brand name and use certain words to describe their experience, which subconsciously in most cases become the right keywords! This actually then turns into organically generated authentic, keyword-optimized content. In fact, brands can collect and use rich snippets of reviews on their website or use it for marketing purposes to further optimize listings on Google. Take for Instance Face Theory, they use ratings and reviews to structure the entire listing for their own e-commerce website. This helps them rank higher in search on Google and even on Amazon.
#6 Understand Customer Sentiment via reviews
Consumers use reviews to make purchase decisions. On the flip side, what’s interesting is that brands can also gauge their consumers through reviews or feedbacks they submit. This feedback helps brands align with the ground reality of how consumers really feel about their products. And by synthesizing & breaking down reviews across channels, brands can work towards bringing more innovation and personalization for their customer, just the way they want.
Understand Customer Sentiment via reviews
Take, for instance, Starbucks, a leading international coffee chain introduced MyStarbucksIdea in 2008. This was an instant hit and Starbucks customers within just the first five years of operation, shared over 150,000 ideas and recommendations to the brand, and the company put hundreds of them to use. This is a real case of a brand becoming an advocate to customer sentiments to drive its innovations directly from the core of ideas and reviews submitted by discerning customers.
In today’s scenario, brands do not need elaborate programs like MyStarbucksIdea, they can simply ask customers for their ideas, thoughts, and suggestions via online reviews across numerous platforms! The only task from there is on is collecting and analyzing these reviews to glean insights.
The new normal has led to an explosion of product reviews as more and more people shop online. In the US alone reviews were 40 – 80% higher during the core months of the pandemic in 2020 as compared to 2019.
Reviews matter, and even more so now. Brands need to build it as part of their actionable strategies and incentivize consumers to rate and review products with each purchase.
Need help tracking your online ratings? Or decoding customer sentiment from reviews they’ve left for your products? Sign up for a demo with our team to know how DataWeave can help!
Lessons from Kroger, Albertson’s, and Safeway’s Optimized Online Positioning
As consumers continue their migration to online shopping through and after the pandemic, Halloween shopping is no exception.
If that’s the new paradigm, what clues should retailers and brands be looking for to enhance their sales? With Halloween around the corner, the analyst team at DataWeave wanted to see how successfully grocers are partnering with brands to prepare for the influx of online Halloween shoppers. We tracked insights from September 14 to 24, 2021, using data from Kroger, Albertson’s, and Safeway websites to understand the preparedness of each retailer, their partnered brands, and how their online strategies compare with one another.
There are hundreds of ways for a consumer to search for a brand’s products online and of critical importance, almost 50 percent of traffic across the top 1000 retailers come through search. At the same time, consumers are becoming less brand conscious. This is a significant development, and there are significant ramifications to consumers searching for products using generic category specific keywords without including brand names in the search. Consequently, we can’t sufficiently stress how understanding online channel experiences is critical to successful outcomes. Retailers and brands alike need an integrated view of how to improve their discoverability and share of search by considering all touchpoints in the digital commerce ecosystem.
The Importance of Product Descriptions, Assortment, Sizes, Price Points
With 75 percent of people never scrolling past the first page of a website when searching for the goods they desire, getting products to page one is imperative to a brand’s success. While in-store, festive displays will help drive traffic and availability awareness, the ‘digital shelf’ is a totally different locus of opportunity. Here, brands rely on proper product descriptions, the right assortment, sizes, and competitive price points to stand out among the crowd and modify their positioning, given each retailer’s consumer base and assorted competitive brands.
Optimizing the Digital Shelf and leading Share of Search for page one across all retail websites isn’t achievable overnight, but it is never too early or too late to start, given the 24/7 visibility your products have online. When it comes to Halloween candies, confectionery brands must consider many factors when differentiating their online positioning, such as finding the ‘sweet spot’ for pricing, size, and variety within each product offered, and knowing the right and wrong times to drive promotions. Additional elements to consider when introducing seasonal candies include cannibalization of non-holiday inventory, which can increase spoilage for aged inventory, or if holiday items are successful, could cause an abundance of markdown items to be sold before replacement inventory can be ordered.
To better understand what retailers are doing—or should be doing—to optimize their Halloween holiday sales, we turned to our DataWeave Digital Shelf Analytics data to answer these questions:
Which brands and products are dominating “Share of Search” page one results across all three retailer websites?
How do discounts and promotions vary among candy brands and retailers?
How does each retailer use Halloween-specific and ‘variety’ labeling within the product descriptor to differentiate their holiday season assortment?
What sizes of candy packages is each retailer offering, and how does this play out in online positioning?
Winning Candy Brands
Which Halloween candies are people searching for—and presumably buying? Our data shows that Hershey’s branded candies achieved the greatest page one ‘Share of Search’ results across all three retailers’ websites—Albertson’s, Kroger and Safeway. This was unsurprising, given their total SKU count as well as the brand loyalty Hershey’s steadily maintains throughout the year. There is a high likelihood of consumers buying what they see on page one, so in our analysis, Hershey’s has the best chance of ‘winning’ this holiday season within all three of these retail channels.
That said, looking more specifically at how candy items are labeled and bundled adds another layer of insight to how candy brands are performing at each of these retailers.
Historically speaking, Snickers is almost always within the top five confectionery brands sold during the Halloween season, but with the migration of more consumers shopping online, Mars may be leaving opportunity on the table this year. Our data shows that Snickers had the lowest Share of Search percentage on page one results on Safeway.com and Albertson’s.com for brands carrying 8 or more SKUs each, indicating they will most likely not make the first page results—and therefore may end up as a clearance item after Halloween if relying on online promotional efforts to achieve sales goals.
Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category
What Size Candy Packages Are Retailers Carrying/Betting On?
For example, Albertsons.com and Safeway.com’s assortment includes 124 SKUs and 108 SKUs respectively with most of those items falling within the 5 to 16-ounce (averaging 25 percent) and 32 to 64-ounce (averaging 29 percent) sizes, Kroger.com is betting on a ‘smaller is better’ strategy, with a majority (63 percent) of their candies sold in the 5 to 16-ounce package size.
The average Hershey candies available through all three retailers happen to be much greater in size and price point, on average, than other top ranked items, and while these larger items appear to mostly be variety packs, a majority are not labeled as ‘Halloween’ candy.
Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category
How Important Is Halloween-Specific Branding?
Our data shows that Kroger.com included the name ‘Halloween’ within the product description for most (around 80 percent) of the candies sized 16 ounces or smaller, and overall have labeled more than two-thirds of their total candy items sold as ‘Halloween.’ This indicates they are staged well for the peak of the seasonal demand and anticipate their shoppers to buy smaller unit sizes, comparatively speaking.
Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category
Taking a closer look at all items positioned as ‘Halloween’ across the three retailer websites, Hershey’s brand Reese’s is set for success at Kroger.com for total Share of Search percentage, considering they carry eight Reese’s, non-variety SKUs. Competing in the audience of others leading with variety packs indicates the weight the Reese’s brand carries and also indicates they will also have a great likelihood of success for increased sales this Halloween season.
Mars M&M’s brand came out on top at Safeway.com and Albertsons.com within the ‘Halloween’ labeled SKUs, but a majority (around 70 percent) of these are variety packs that leads with the M&M’s brand versus an M&M’s only bag.
Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category
How Much (Less) Are People Paying for Halloween Candy?
To determine whether candy promotions are increasing Share of Search, DataWeave measured the average promotional discount these retailers and top candy brands are offering online. When looking only at brands offering discounts on 100% of the SKUs they carry within each retailer, Brach’s brand is performing best on Albertson’s.com, and Hershey products are positioned at the top for Kroger.com and Safeway.com.
Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category
Do Consumers Search For ‘Variety’ Candy Bags, or One-Product-Only Bags?
DataWeave tagged the word ‘variety’ and found that across all three retailers’ websites, non-variety candy bags take up a greater overall Share of Search than ‘variety’ bags. Either this isn’t an important search word or retailers could try adding ‘variety’ to product descriptions to increase Share of Search.
Source: DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Solution: Data aggregated from 9/14/21-9/24/21 for Albertson’s.com and Kroger.com, and 9/17-9/24 for Safeway.com; Analysis was conducted reviewing product information for items falling within the ‘Halloween Candy’ listing category
Time to Make a Change
Getting products to page one on retailers’ websites can improve sales by as much as 50 percent, but determining the right levers to pull to get there is no easy feat. Based on our preliminary analysis of Halloween insights, our advice to confectionery brands this Halloween season is to invest now to increase visibility to the fast-changing market, to get orders right and on time, establish effective pricing and promotional plans, and get the right candies in stock, to the right locations. Retailers able to get an end-to-end view of the online competitive landscape will be able to make calculated marketing decisions that stand to help generate growth and profitability.
We are now within the prime Halloween shopping season, given that 55 percent of candy sales usually happen in the last two weeks of October (According to Timothy LeBel, President of U.S. Sales for Mars Wrigley). With online sales still growing as consumers have shifted their comfort level in buying more online, retailers should be looking for ways to optimize their product positioning, increase their Share of Search, to improve the likelihood of consumers ordering their brand’s candy to ply those Trick-or-Treaters knocking on their doors.
About DataWeave
DataWeave is a leading provider of advanced sales optimization solutions for e-commerce businesses, consumer brands and marketplaces. The AI-driven proprietary technology and language-agnostic platform aggregates consumable and actionable Competitive Intelligence across 500+ billion data points globally, in 25+ languages, with insights to performance for more than 400,000 brands across 1,500+ websites tracked across 20+ verticals, to ensure online performance is always optimized.
With online shopping becoming increasingly important for brands, the concept of ‘product visibility’ within this ecosystem has emerged as the most noteworthy path to generate sales & win the Digital Shelf. Research shows that on Amazon, the first 3 products garner 64% of business generated. And post-pandemic, more and more people are now shopping online, which means your ‘digital product visibility’ becomes as critical as your in-store product visibility. What’s more, this digital shopper loves to start their search for products directly at leading marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and the likes. As per the Shopper-First Retail report released by Salesforce almost 87% of shoppers begin product searches online. So, this is the window that brands have and this is where they need to hold their customer’s attention. But the primary question here is how to appear high up on your customer’s search?
Imagine thepages of an e-commerce marketplace as Digital Shelves and correlate that with the offline space. Will the customer sieve through a rack-full of products to reach for your brand, lying at the back of the shelf? No, they won’t. If they have to buy a personal care item, they will choose the brand that is visible to them at the front of the rack. In a similar vein, when they search for a product online on popular marketplaces, they will quickly click “add to cart” for the ones that come up top in the search.
Algorithms of popular e-commerce marketplaces are usually well-kept secrets, but here are 4 hacks brands can consider to increase product visibility on their Digital Shelf.
1. Optimize what you say about your products
Work on the product listing content
To ensure that your products are visible, you will have to work on the product listing content judiciously. And it’s all about using the right keywords. Here, you will have to tighten the strength of your content to ensure that both your listing text and titles are accurate, and include natural language search keywords that consumers normally use when searching for products. Ignore, jargon or business-heavy words, and think what a real consumer may use to search for a smartwatch – for instance. ‘Bluetooth watch’ or ‘Smart Watch’ or ‘Camera Watch’ etc. The product title below has it all covered. So no matter which of the 3 keywords a customer is searching for, this watch will come up in their search results.
Listing Text and Title enables Product Visibility
This aside, the title should highlight as much as possible about the product and the description should be pointed and readily related to the search one can use to look for it. For instance, in the below image Puracy, has not only used the word shampoo in its title, which normally the consumers will use to search, but has given all the major highlights as a part of the title. The consumer at a glance would get the whole picture inclusive of the quality, fragrance, quantity and the dispenser type.
Product features mentioned in Title ensures greater Product Visibility
Search engines take consumer’s natural language preferences into consideration, so a bad or incomplete product description or title will never help customers see your brand easily on the marketplaces listing. Here’s a listing, which does not work at all.
Bad or incomplete product description is bad for Product Searchability
Let’s look at the above example closely. If the customer is a diehard fan of Calvin Klein and is searching for a Calvin Klein sweater, then this product will definitely show up in their search results, but what if he was looking to buy full sleeve polos or wanted a full sleeve sweater, or a navy blue sweater – even though this product fits the bill completely for all the searches, but it may not show up in his search results only because the right content/ keywords have not been used to describe the product. And that is why it is important to use common keywords in your product content that consumers normally use when searching for your product.
In fact, according to a recent Forrester survey 45% of online shoppers do not complete a purchase if they cannot find what they are looking for, and insufficient product information adds to the cause. If you want to audit your current e-commerce content, DataWeave can help!
2.Improve product ranking through the right reviews
Good Reviews and Ratings boost product page rankings
Marketplace search engines prioritize products with good reviews and ratings and show them higher up in search. This prompts product visibility and assures your brand of organic discoverability. So, it is important to fetch as many honest reviews and ratings for your products, in order to gain marketplace visibility. Research shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 72% of consumers are inspired to trust a brand based on the positive reviews it receives. Moreover, millennials, trust user-generated content 50% more than other media. Even though bad reviews are part and parcel of any business, a brand’s focus should be on ‘honest’ reviews. Real user-based reviews have the power to generate customer trust. When customers begin to trust your product and in your brand, they are more willing to add that product to their cart and finalize their purchase. Good product reviews will certainly make your Digital Shelf a lot more attractive & boost your product sales. Learn how DataWeave can helps brands monitor & stay on top of their Reviews & Ratings
3. Give importance to pricing and attain the sweet spot with product ranking
The right Product Pricing leads to higher rankings in Searches
Intelligent pricing, which is not too low or too high should be your weapon to make your brand gain ample visibility among its competitors. Moreover, if the cost of your products is ominously dissimilar from other products it is competing with, it is bound to impact your position in search results. To achieve great results, either you can consider your competitors and analyse the pricing to reach a perfect mid-ground or choose a dynamic pricing strategy. This strategy will allow your products to cost less than the competition, marginally.
Amazon is pretty sophisticated in this department and reprices top-selling items 3 or 4 times per day and the same can be repriced up to 12 times daily. Following in line, McKinsey reports that multichannel leaders are also changing the prices on 10 to 20 percent for their online assortment daily.At DataWeave, we can help brands track prices on a daily or even every few hours during sale season, when prices are the most sensitive. Learn more here.
4. Invest in paid advertising to improve your listing
Paid ads on Online Retail sites can boost product visibility and Sales
Investing money in paid promotion at e-commerce marketplaces will help you gain visibility and push your products on top of the first page of your category listing. Today, e-commerce platforms allow you to pay for promoted listings that are displayed near organic search results. In fact, a paid Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign will allow you to build up your sales volume and brand awareness, which will in turn assure your brand of long-term organic search placement.
The idea of sponsored ads is getting well-received all across and Amazon’s accelerating ad revenue growth is a living proof of this. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Amazon’s ad revenue reached $7.95 billion, up 66% over the previous year.
The e-commerce marketplace is expanding and in 2020, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 4.28 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022. To be able to make the most of this growing market, make sure your brand is winning the Digital Shelf, starting by winning the appropriate ‘Share of Search’. Want to learn how DataWeave can help you win the Digital Shelf? Sign up for a demo with our team to know more.
Traditionally, Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) such as McDonald’s or Burger King, have been strategically operating on a brick and mortar model. However, according to some studies, an average QSR generates as much as 75% of its sales from online orders.
With the advent of delivery apps such as Uber Eats and Doordash, a significant portion of QSRs’ business has moved to these platforms. The war to top rank on one of these platforms is an even greater feat. With each brand competing for the top listing, it’s much less about the dollars you pay and much more about optimizing your investments.
The relationship between QSR chains and food delivery apps has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the critical grouses QSRs have against food apps is the incremental marketing spend required to participate on the platform and the inability to measure the impact of their investment. What makes matters worse is the limitation in metrics even available to measure the impact – neither the food apps provide them, nor does anyone else.
At DataWeave, we have made it our mission to enable QSRs to not only define measurable metrics to achieve a positive ROI for food app marketing investments, but we also equip QSRs with the tools to track their competitive performance at granular, zip code-based level so that localized strategies can be modified as needed. Below is an example of a 1000+ store chain QSR we partnered with to optimize a pre-existing investment made with a large food aggregator app. Within months of engagement with us, they were able to achieve a 3X increase in sales without adding any additional marketing dollars.
Below are the pain points we identified and solved together:
1. No Defined Metric
Problem – No leading metric to track marketing performance
One of the first issues we realized was that sales was not a good metric for tracking marketing performance as it’s a lagging metric and doesn’t capture the issues that help grow or suppress sales.
Most of the sales are driven by rank in the cuisine category and searches for branded keywords. But, the QSR chain had no way to track these ranks.
In fact, 70%+ sales go to the first five restaurants for the category and keyword
Comparing ranking on food delivery platforms across different categories and times
Solution – Establish ranking as a clear marketing metric
By aggregating data across different food app platforms comprehensively, i.e. across locations, at different times of the day, we established the ranking of the QSR chain in critical categories and for priority keywords, identifying where they under or over-performed relative to the competition. As we did this daily- this became a straightforward metric that helped establish the performance of their marketing campaign.
2. Geographical & Categorical Challenges
Problem: Identifying poor-performing stores and zip codes
We realized it was not a simple exercise to identify well performing stores on food apps since sales depend on many factors such as competition, population of the area, local cuisine preference, etc.
Solution: Zip Code Ranking and Attributes
We tracked the ranking of each store within each Zip Code for keywords and created a list of poor-performing stores. We also extracted attributes such as estimated time of arrival (ETAs), Delivery Fee, Ratings, Reviews, etc., for each of these poor performing stores, to identify the reasons for the poor ranking.
Analysing key metrics at a store level – identifying worst & best performing stores
E.g., We realized 356 of the stores were not populating on first page results, primarily because of poor ratings and High ETAs. After the focused initiative, 278 of these stores started showing on the first page and increased sales by 23%.
3. Sensitivity Analysis Deficiency
Problem: Not clear about the contribution of Rating, ETAs, Fees, etc. on the Ranking
The exact ranking algorithms of these food apps are not publicly shared – so the QSR chain wasn’t clear which variable of rating, ETAs, fees, ad spend, or availability contributed more or less to the overall ranking.
Solution: Sensitivity analysis for measuring contribution
Comprehensive data for multiple zip codes in various timestamps was analyzed to determine which variable contributes most significantly to the rankings and when. We also conducted A/B testing – simultaneously testing two different variables, such as reducing ETAs at one store and improving ad spend at another, calculating which led to greater rank and sales impact.
For example, we realized reducing publicized ETA’s (even by decreasing the delivery radius) contributed much more to improve the rankings than changes to ratings.
4. An Unknown Competitive Landscape
Problem: Tracking competitor performance
For example, we found the QSR chain performed well in key urban centers, but the competition was doing even better, but there wasn’t a good way to track and compare the performance of the competitors.
Solution:
We started tracking the QSR chain and the competition for each of the metrics and started comparing performance.
Analysing competitive performance on key metrics such as ETA, Availability etc
We quickly realized ranking started quickly improving as we gained a slight edge in each metric against the competitors. For example, 5 minutes less ETA adds to higher ranking.
In six months of this exercise with the QSR chain, we improved the average ranking from 24 to 11 for the QSR chain, getting them featured on the first page.
5. Blind Advertising Investment Opportunities
Problem:
The QSR chain was not clear on which banners (Popular near you, National Favorites, etc.) to choose to invest in, and had to depend on the recommendations of the food platforms entirely.
They weren’t even provided a clear view of which position made the banner visible and at what rank among those banners was their promo visible. They were at times the 7th promo in the 6th banner, which has almost zero probability of being discovered by the user – this happened despite paying heavily for the banners.
Solution:
We aggregated data for all banners populated within each zip code and found out the ranking and in which position the QSR chain was visible.
Identifying and analysing right banners for advertising spends
The QSR chain invested in 630 zip code-based banners with guaranteed visibility, but our assessment indicated the banners were only visible in 301 zip codes. After selecting suitable banners for promotions, we improved visibility to 533 zip codes within enhancing the budget.
We are now using the same strategy for refining discounts, offers, promotions, and coupons.
6. Lack of Campaign Performance Monitoring
Problem: Unsure of the long-term impact of marketing spend
In general, increasing marketing spend does give a temporary boost to sales, but the QSR chain’s question was, how can we measure the long-term impact i.e., ranking keywords and the targeted zip codes.
Solution:
We created a simple widget for every marketing campaign which showed the rank for the keywords for selected zip codes before the campaign, during the campaign, and post the campaign, clearly establishing the midterm impact of the campaign. This constant monitoring allowed the QSR to also quickly pivot on their strategy on account of national holidays etc, and act accordingly.
7. Non-Existent ROI Measurement
Problem: Establishing the impact of ranking on sales
Though the QSR chain could track sales that were coming via the food app channel, they had no way of knowing incremental organic volume driven by marketing efforts.
One missing variable here was how much of extra sales could be attributed to improvement of QSR ranking?
Solution:
By combining the sales data with aggregated insights over time, we established for the QSR chain how much increase in sales they could anticipate from an increase in ranking, also knowing which changed variables led to the percentage of change increase.
So, in essence, we were able to tell the QSR chain that for each store how much sales would increase by improving ETAs, rating, ad visibility, availability, etc., enabling precise ROI calculations for each intervention they make for their stores.
Increasing sales by 3x within six months was only the beginning, and the journey of driving marketing efficiency using competitive and channel data has only just begun.
DataWeave for QSRs
DataWeave has been working with global QSR chains, helping them drive their growth on aggregator platforms by enabling them to monitor their key metrics, diagnose improvement areas, recommend action, and measure interventions’ impact. DataWeave’s strategy eliminates the dependence on food apps for accurate data. We aggregate food app data and websites to help you with analysis and the justification of marketing spend and drive 10-15% growth.
DataWeave’s strategy eliminates the dependence on food apps for accurate data. We aggregate food app data and websites to help you with analysis and the justification of marketing spend and drive 10-15% growth.
If you want to know learn how your brand can leverage Dataweave’s data insights and improve sales, then click here to sign up for a demo
The big buzzword of the decade has got to be data. When the untapped potentials of great data were first discovered, experts started calling it the new oil, implying that it is now the most precious resource. And then when the usage of data became more mainstream, where corporations started mining and getting access to piles of data, people started calling it the new soil, insinuating that if all this data isn’t regularly nurtured and optimally used, it would be rendered useless.
But amidst all this hype, all the clutter, and all the buzz around this four-letter word, data is just a bunch of numbers and statistics collected for reference and analysis. Basically, it is just what you, your company, your government, or your country make of it. So how can retailers make the most of it?
Before assessing the use cases, it is paramount to understand the different types of data retailers have access to today. Broadly, it is structured and unstructured. Log files, excel spreadsheets with point-of-sale figures, hierarchies, and inventory data are rich sources of structured data; and information that is derived from in-store sensors, customer reviews, social media posts and hashtags, and even conversations between the store staff and customers serve as unstructured data. While the former sits on well-organized databases for retailers to access, giving them operational robustness, unstructured data gathered from social media and personal interactions helps retailers achieve unprecedented value and gain a competitive advantage. However, the very nature of unstructured data makes the process of obtaining, analyzing and making sense of it rather difficult.
Structuring vs Unstructured
In fact, according to a survey by Deloitte, only 18% of organizations reported being able to take advantage of such data. However, harnessing this data isn’t rocket science (not anymore, at least) as there are a number of tools at a retailer’s disposal today that makes this process convenient and efficient. At DataWeave, we help retailers and brands make sense of unstructured data. Read more about our tech here.
Unstructured data is also qualitative, rather than being quantitative, which in turn makes its use cases more effective, giving businesses a competitive edge. How? Glad you asked!
Customer Behaviour Analytics
What motivates a customer to buy more, or spend more time in a store or online? What is the best time to reach them and where (in an omnichannel world) would they like to be reached? Million-dollar questions, right? Big data gives you insights into this and more, which will then help improve customer acquisition and loyalty.
UK-based home retailer Argos uses data to find out exactly how consumers felt about them. After having embarked on an ambitious project of opening 53 new digital stores a few years back, Argos invested in tools that helped them analyze data received from various social media sites based on the demographics and location to assess the performance of each store and identify rooms for improvement. This helped them understand which stores were perceived more favorably and in which areas, quickly identify issues in-store, action feedback, and find resolutions to increase customer satisfaction.
Want to know customer sentiment against your product? Our Sentiment Analysis solution can help! Access in-depth insights sourced from customer opinions with our constantly evolving algorithm.
DataWeave Sentiment Analysis
Personalization and hyper-personalization
The fact that customers are interacting with retailers on multiple platforms today gives retailers access to a wealth of information about their individual customers that could help them tailor their products, offerings, services and communication to these individuals. According to a study conducted by BCG and commissioned by Google, customers increasingly prefer a shopping experience that’s easy and fast and that helps them make purchase decisions.
Target’s popular pregnancy prediction score based on purchase and purchase volume of about 25 different products in-store, such as unscented lotion, large amounts of calcium, magnesium, and zinc, serves as a great example of how they use this information to then target advertising (e.g sending a booklet of coupons related for baby products) to this cohort of their customers. This algorithm got the international limelight when Target started sending such coupons to the irate father of a teenager who had no idea that his daughter was pregnant. Basically, the retailer knew about the man’s daughter’s pregnancy even before he did!
Operations and supply chain
Amazon Go
A healthy mix of structured and unstructured data is key today in achieving operational excellence. Faster product life cycles and ever-complex operations cause organizations to use big data in retail analytics to understand supply chains and product distribution to reduce costs. Combining that with CRM, ERPs, and other log file data can help in real-time delivery management, improved order picking, and overall supply chain efficiency to reduce costs.
Amazon Go, the checkout-free convenience store by Amazon uses AI-powered cameras, computer vision, and sensors to facilitate grab-and-go systems. Now, the store wholly relies on structured and unstructured data in order to function. The sophisticated automated system makes ordering and restocking highly efficient, given that the cameras can track inventory in real-time. The system knows how many picks-per-hour each stocker is completing and exactly when items go out of stock.
The fact that data enables prediction and forecasts can help cater to a prospective rise in demand by managing the supply chain in advance. For example, if a pharmaceutical company analyzed social media content and determined that people in specific geographical areas were discussing cold and flu symptoms, that could give them a heads-up that demand for products to treat those conditions is on the rise.
Price and cost optimization
Machine learning algorithms are not only designed to learn, but over time they get better at finding the optimal price points for retailers. Retailers can use machine learning models to set prices against sales targets. According to an IBM study, 73 percent of companies surveyed plan to optimize their pricing and promotions through smart automation before the end of 2021.
Automation achievers outshine peers in profitability and revenue growth
Walmart has shrewdly utilized powerful proprietary algorithms to make their offers nearly impossible to beat over the last few years. It still reigns in offering the best price match policy for their customers. This strategy has helped it gain a lot of trust, good publicity, and enabled retention of customers. But how do you optimize what you charge without pricing yourself out? That is where data comes into play. You need real-time monitoring across thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs) to identify key value categories and items. With proper data analytics in your pocket, you can ask and answer the following important questions: Which items’ prices matter most? Which items have the biggest pull on price perception? What pricing strategies are competitors adopting, and how can you match them? And which items can you afford to reduce in price to win loyalty and boost that very perception?
Every company uses data to achieve its own personal goals and objectives, but what makes one retailer better than the other is how they use both structured and unstructured data to provide a seamless experience and shopping journey to customers in a way that is effortless, non-intrusive, and innovative. So use your structured data and also find a way, use the tools, and leverage the power of technology to structure your unstructured big data. In today’s competitive retail landscape where retailers – both online and offline – are leveraging cutting edge technologies to deliver close-to-perfect products and services, and innovative concepts, it is only the ability to harness all forms of structured and unstructured data that will result in achieving your ever-evolving customer engagement and experience goals.
Want to learn how DataWeave can help make sense of your unstructured data? Sign up for a demo with our team to know more.
It’s been a pivotal year for the CPG industry in India. Consumers were forced to stay at home due to the pandemic, leading to a surge in online CPG shopping, simultaneously increasing the expectation for safety and convenience.
Brands and retailers needed to adjust to this new reality to meet customer expectations that were very different from the pre-Covid era. They needed to make adjustments right from the way of marketing to product assortments, communication to customer interaction. Factors such as increased competition from e-commerce platforms, the emergence of homegrown brands, traditional players making the online shift all have transformed the CPG industry.
A survey conducted by Kantar showed the delta growth of top CPG brands in the last five years in India.
A survey conducted by Kantar showed the delta growth of top CPG brands in the last five years in India. As per the report, among the 428 brands, 55% of brands failed to grow their penetration.
“Some big brands like Lux and Lifebuoy feature in this list of brands that failed to grow – each of these brands still reached over half of India, but in 2016 they were much bigger. Size alone, therefore, does not guarantee success, but it helps.”
Going forward too, CPG sales will remain high as consumers are spending more time at home and brands must ensure they are doing everything possible to work on their strategies. Hence, CPG companies are turning to technology to increase their productivity and efficiency.
What Is Data Analytics?
In brief, data analytics refers to the process of drawing conclusions from any predetermined datasets. With CPG data analytics, it means any product-related or consumer behavior-related data that is relevant to the brand. However, data has long been ignored by CPG companies. Research by McKinsey shows that CPG scored below average when it comes to digitally mature industries globally. Only 40 percent of consumer-goods companies that have made digital and analytics investments are achieving returns above the cost of capital. The rest are stuck in “pilot purgatory,” eking out small wins but failing to make an enterprise-wide impact.”
A survey conducted by Kantar showed the delta growth of top CPG brands in the last five years in India.
It is important for any company that sells products to understand the structure and needs of the consumers. The goal is to know what products they should produce and what makes it profitable for them to produce it. This is where data comes in. The more data, the better it is, and it is important for companies to understand what to study to discover the trends in their consumers’ behavior. If they can identify trends and make predictions based on that data, then they will be better prepared to make changes that will improve the business.
Another banner trend and rightly so is using modern-day technologies such as AI & Machine Learning (ML) to spot hidden trends and opportunities. ML capabilities can help CPG companies identify anomalies that are not obvious to human intelligence so they can react accordingly.
Data Analytics Gives You An Edge Over Your Competitors
Big CPG companies such as PepsiCo, Unilever, and McDonald’s have been focusing on data for a long time. McDonald’s has been investing in data heavily since 2015 and also acquired analytics firm Dynamic Yield, an ML platform for retailers in 2019. Some of the data points that McDonald’s uses are historical sales data, customers’ past purchases, items in trend, and so on. For maximum efficiency, brands must focus on data across the board – from data related to sales and merchandising to price optimization, marketing, supply chain, and more.
Key Data points for CPG
Some of the key data points for CPG companies to reconfigure their businesses are:
a. Sales Data And Trends
Sales data shows the units of a product (SKUs) that are sold across different locations or channels. This data gives a better idea of what decisions, activities, assortments lead to higher sales. While the companies often have a track of their offline sales, it is important that you combine both offline and online sales data, especially now that digital channels are turning out to be a make or break for a lot of CPG brands.
Instead of relying on traditional surveys or testimonies, brands must look to invest in tools that can present this highly complex data in a clear and communicative manner.
Getting sales data from your own website is the easy part, but if you want to know your online sales and market share on marketplaces like Amazon v/s your competitors, get in touch with our team to know more.
b. Competitive Analytics
Competitor analysis provides an opportunity to go deeper and evaluate who’s operating in your space, how they operate if there is a specific competitor you don’t know of, or even a potential competitive advantage you are not aware of.
This data also helps to focus on the root cause for positive and negative developments, and uncover relative market positions of main competitors. Depending on the product and goals, companies should gather data about their competitors’ pricing & promotional strategies, package design, sizes, product range, etc.
c. Market Basket Analytics
Popularly known as assortment optimization analytics, this is one of the most important data points, from a marketing perspective. This is based on the theory that customers who buy one item are more likely to buy another specific item.
For instance, if a customer is buying hot dogs they are typically more likely to buy buns. Grocery stores also pay attention to product placement and shelving, you will almost always find shampoos and conditioners together. Walmart’s infamous beer-and-diapers anecdote is also a classic example of Market Basket Analytics.
If you want insights into your product assortment, bestsellers, or insights into your competitor’s assortment and bestsellers, we can help!
d. Price And Promotional Analytics
CPG industry is a highly fragmented market and companies focus on pricing and promotions to boost their sales. More than often, promotion spends tend to be even bigger than advertising budgets. However, many companies struggle to get their pricing right and often find that promotions are actually counterproductive.
Creating optimized pricing and promotional strategies especially in a digital world can be a struggle. In a world where shoppers compare prices and deals, have thousands (if not lakhs) of options to choose from, pricing agility can be the key to competitive advantage. Top retailers and CPG companies rely on data and analytics to get their strategies right.
CPG Analytics Breakup
e. Customer analytics
Businesses can take full advantage of advanced analytics to map their customers’ shopping experience and make changes to their marketing strategies accordingly. Brands can create a personalized experience for their audience using information such as customer demographics, store and brand loyalty, purchase frequency, completed transactions, abandoned products, and carts, etc. This will help CPG manufacturers deliver superb customer experiences and design lean operations to meet their objectives of better understanding their consumers to enhance their experience, reduce costs, streamline the supply chain and enhance the relationships.
Conclusion
If used right these data points can create exponential profits and margins for CPG brands. It’s Important that businesses invest in big data and advanced analytics to focus on delivering impactful services to consumers. Businesses can use these data points to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities.
For short-term goals, CPG data helps by providing an accurate and clear picture of the ongoing operations across the entire business. As a long-term plan, measuring, evaluating, and tracking this data can empower your business to make better decisions and allocate your resources better. CPG data analytics affects the entire supply chain processes and solutions and can boost sales, ROI, and YoY growth if used tactfully.DataWeave’s AI-Powered analytics solutions give CPG brands the data they need to improve customer experience and drive e-commerce sales. Sign up for a demo with our team to know more.
Direct-to-Consumer (D2C), Digitally Native Vertical Brands (DNVB), and brand.com serve as different variations of a similar concept that has blown up in the past few years fueled by factors ranging from a surge in online shopping, stay-at-home restrictions brought about by the pandemic, and a general shift in consumer behavior.
D2C sales were forecasted to account for $17.75 billion of total e-commerce sales in 2020, up 24.3% from the previous year, according to eMarketer. The Middle East might have been late in joining the party but the key players from across the board including brands that sold the traditional way via wholesalers and retailers or those that use online marketplaces such as Amazon and Noon, and the new brands entering this nascent market today are all realizing the potentials of communicating with and selling to customers directly.
The Middle East has one of the highest youth populations in the world with more than 28% of the residents aged between 14 and 29. This means that a great chunk of the population is inherently digital natives, who grew up with smartphones. These young tech-savvy consumers are more informed, are massively influenced by social media for their purchases, are more value and purpose-driven compared to the older generations, as a result of which are open to experimenting with newer brands that align with their ideas and ideologies.
This presents an opportunity for both traditional retailers as well as nascent brands to tap into their e-commerce potential and tailor their offerings to this new cohort of customers leveraging data to understand their individual needs by connecting and engaging with their customers. And the best way to “pivot” to the ever-evolving demands would be by adopting the D2C approach.
Some of the benefits of the D2C milieu in retail would be:
Access to Customer Data
1. Complete access to customer data
Many retailers agree that data is the real differentiator in D2C retail. Using marketplaces like noon.com and Amazon to retail products is great because of the large customer base they have access to, but the downside is, these behemoth marketplaces own the customers and hence their data. The importance of data can’t be stressed enough, but a key use case of all that complex algorithm is that it empowers retailers to customize and personalize offerings to their customers. According to a study by InstaPage, 74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalised. Not having control or access means, they are now crippled from the ‘ability to customize’.
2. Building direct connections with customers
Building direct connections with customers
Trust is a strong consideration for most consumers today. According to a PWC report, 60% of consumers in the Middle East shop online with companies they feel they can trust Gaining trust has proven to be an arduous task for retailers, who now must assure security and demonstrate high levels of education and awareness of their customers, which can only happen through direct connections, personal interactions, and consistent engagement. D2C brands are much better placed to respond to consumer demand to meet their expectations and more importantly address and resolve any grievances they might have.
3. Increasing margins by cutting out middlemen
Increasing margins by cutting out middlemen
Studies have shown that successful D2C companies have a gross margin of 50 – 85%, thanks to two components – effective customer acquisition and eliminating middlemen. Brands with their own unique value proposition, voice, channels and strategies come across as more authentic, and for the millennials and Gen Z, authenticity is the name of the game. Secondly, and perhaps more evidently, getting rid of distribution partners ends up saving costs for the company tremendously.
Also, e-commerce eliminates the high fixed distribution costs brands used to pay retailers for shelf space and replaces it with variable costs to list on their website or an e-commerce marketplace. However, one thing to keep in mind when listing on marketplaces is that digital channels provide transparency into pricing. And customers will be comparing the prices of your products against your competitors. That’s why it’s critical for D2C brands to benchmark their pricing strategies against their rivals to drive more revenue and margins by pricing products competitively. Want to know how? Read about how DataWeave’s AI-Powered e-commerce analytics solutions can help
4. Enables to expand presence
Enables to expand presence
While the D2C approach is proving to be profitable, it also gives brands the flexibility to expand and enhance their presence. Nike would be a prime example of how it has aggressively expanded its presence offline and online since it announced a decade back about its Customer Direct Acceleration strategy. Over the years, Nike’s D2C sales have grown from 16% of the brand’s total revenue to 35% or $12.4 billion by the end of fiscal 2020. Undoubtedly, Nike’s e-commerce focus has been strong, but what they have also mastered is its digitally integrated concept stores that have taken in-store experience to the next level. Moreover, going the D2C way has given the brand more flexibility to build on its voice and purpose, which is reflected across all of its channels and touchpoints. As a result, Nike has been able to grow its presence in existing markets, and establish the brand in new markets by widening its e-commerce penetration and opening stores that helps build communities and serve as marketing fronts instead of merely being points of sale.
In the Middle East too, there are some strong players, that realized the benefits of D2C and are reaping the benefits now. The most prominent of them would be Huda Beauty, founded by makeup artist turned billionaire entrepreneur Huda Kattan. Beginning as a blog in 2010, Huda Beauty has fast become the number one beauty Instagram account in the world. Huda launched her brand into Sephora in the Dubai Mall in 2013 and has since expanded the range to include a vast array of beauty products. The brand has since had several record-breaking launches globally, with products now available worldwide on hudabeauty.com as well as retailers including, Sephora, Sephora in JC Penney, Harrods, Selfridges, and Cult Beauty. Equipped with a clear value proposition and an army of loyal customers, the company continues to grow as its founder continues to deliver on the brand promise and remains connected with her customers bypassing middlemen.
Also read how DataWeave helped Douglas, a premium beauty retailer in Germany go D2C when the pandemic forced them to focus on their ‘Digital First’ strategy.
Another example would be the popular eyewear brand, Warby Parker, a company that capitalized on technology, data, and strived to bring a solution to the market. It stepped into an industry that was criticized for being expensive, entered a market that was skeptical of purchasing online, and turned the whole situation around by going D2C. They designed their own frames and sourced their own raw materials, drastically bringing down the costs that would have been passed on to end consumers. They introduced virtual try-on that delivered accurate results turning customers into loyal consumers. And today, after six separate rounds of fundraising, the company is reportedly set to launch an Initial Public Offering this year.
The playing field in the Middle East is wide open and the appetite for brands that respect value, put people over profits, care about providing suitable, cruelty-free, and ethical products, and understand their customers is only growing. Brands with a robust infrastructure, the right technical know-how and technologies, expertise to manage data, and clear strategies are already on the right path to establishing a strong D2C platform.
Insights from DataWeave can help D2C brands make smart, competitive assortment, promotion, and pricing decisions amongst other things to improve the customer experience and drive e-commerce sales. Sign up for a demo with our team to know more.
Food aggregators have emerged as a critical channel for Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) chains to grow their business – especially post-pandemic. Quick Service Restaurants, QSRs, as we call them, are capitalizing on the opportunity too. For many chains, as high as 50% of their revenue now comes via aggregator channels.
However, most QSR chains are only beginning to leverage data and analytics to drive business on the food aggregator apps.
Currently, QSRs spend vast amounts on marketing on Food apps but are always unsure of the return on their investment. Aggregators share some data, but they have an inherent motive to entice QSRs to buy more advertisements. They cannot share competitive insights as well. Moreover, as QSRs work with several platforms at once, it gets difficult to collate and analyze data from all these platforms together. These issues make leveraging data for QSR chains difficult. At Dataweave, we have collated some insights from our recent experience of working with global QSR chains helping them improve their sales on different food applications using data:
1. Availability
(L) Availability of QSR outlets across aggregator platforms at state, city, and outlet levels.
(R) Availability trends at Lunch and Dinner slots across platforms. Such trends can highlight problem areas that need to be addressed.
The easiest and most impactful fix is to ensure that all your outlets are available on the app at the peak slots, typically lunch and dinner. Availability increase of ~2% at peak times results in order volume increase by ~5%-7%.
The reasons for unavailability range from lack of riders, overwhelming orders at the outlet, or just plain technical glitches. Tracking this metric and actively engaging with your stores and aggregator platforms to resolve any issues should be a daily priority.
2. Monitoring Keyword Ranks
Illustrative chart showing a high correlation between ranking and sales
If you are a Pizza chain but don’t show up among the first five ranks when your target customer is searching for Pizza, the chances of a sale are lower.
What helps is to track the ranking for your brand, and your competitor brands, in different category listings across different keywords.
Your ranking may differ a lot by region, markets, and Zip codes depending on consumer tastes, competitors, and your brand presence, and it’s helpful to track it granularly.
No surprises here – but rank is strongly correlated with your order volumes!
3. Tracking competitors
Illustrative chart showing the rank of key QSR chains on the home page and various categories
One of the tricks to rapidly gain in ranking is to monitor competitors in your category and ensure that you are doing better on each attribute – ranking, rating, ETAs (estimated time of arrival), fees, discounts, etc.
A slight edge across your outlets translates to rapid gain in ranking and order volumes.
4. Choosing suitable banners for promotions
Position of various banners at various zip codes. Important to choose banners that rank higher.
Choosing banners is an essential strategy to gain visibility – but it’s vital to know two factors:
At what rank does the banner you are choosing show up on the App/Website.
At what position does your brand show up in the banner?
If you are on a 5th rank on the 4th banner, your marketing spend is probably going down the drain.
5. A/B Testing
Before starting an effective marketing campaign, it helps to do A/B testing by running two different banners in the same city one week apart to see which yields more impact.
A/B testing can also be a tool to choose banners, discounts, offers, signature images, etc.
6. Sensitivity analysis
Illustrative chart showing that ETAs are highly correlated with sales, whereas ratings do not have much impact.
What has more impact on sales – Ratings or ETAs?
What will be the likely impact on sales of the marketing campaign in New York vs. Denver?
What is the likely impact of competitors’ ad blitz on your sales?
Data can answer these and many more questions, and this sensitivity analysis should be part of the QSR chain’s decision-making
7. Monitoring campaign performance
QSR chains spend millions of dollars of ad budget running campaigns on aggregator platforms combining banner ads, discounts, offers, etc.
It’s a great idea to measure QSRs rank on these aggregator’s platforms before, during, and post the campaign in focus Zip Codes for priority keywords to see if the gain in ranking is temporary or lasts for a while.
The ultimate factors for QSRs to win will remain the quality of food and consistency of the brand’s messaging. Leveraging the power of data can help understand the aggregator platform’s characteristics, competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, & strategy, and consumer behavior trends.
Also, data can help better direct ad dollars and the eCommerce teams’ focus on the right initiatives to drive maximum sales and growth.
DataWeave for QSRs
DataWeave has been working with global QSR chains, helping them drive their growth on aggregator platforms by enabling them to monitor their key metrics, diagnose improvement areas, recommend action, and measure interventions’ impact.
DataWeave’s strategy eliminates the dependence on food apps for accurate data. We directly crawl food aggregators apps and websites and help you with data and analysis to solve the aforementioned issues and drive 10-15% growth.
We are really excited by the recognition that G2 has given us. G2 has awarded us 3 new badges this year in G2’s Summer 2021 Reports. Before we dive into what these awards are, let me give you a little background
What are G2 and G2 Grid Report?
G2 (formerly G2 Crowd) is the world’s leading B2B software and services review platform. The platform helps potential customers choose the right software and services for their business based on authentic, timely reviews from genuine users.
Every quarter, G2 creates a report that showcases the top-rated solutions in the industry, as chosen by the real heroes, our customers
The Grid Report represents the democratic voice of real software users, rather than the subjective opinion of one analyst. G2 rates products from the E-Commerce Analytics category and Multi-Channel Retail category algorithmically based on data sourced from:
Product reviews shared by G2 users
Data aggregated from online sources and social networks
The company’s AI-powered technology platform enables eCommerce businesses to make smarter pricing and merchandising decisions and helps brands optimize their online channels to drive more sales.
With that context here is a deeper look at what we have been recognized for.
Products in the Leader quadrant in the Grid® Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores in the category of E-Commerce Analytics.
Simply put, this means, among all the e-commerce analytics solutions listed on G2, DataWeave scored the highest on customer delight, consideration & market share along with a handful of select companies that were all ‘Leaders’ in this category.
Products in the High Performer quadrant in the Grid® Report have high customer satisfaction scores and Market Presence scores compared to the rest of the Multi-Channel Retail category.
This means that in the Multi-Channel Retail category, while we’re not “Leaders” we come in at a very close second as a “High Performer”. We’re still the preferred choice and have a greater market share & customer consideration over a lot of other solutions in this category on G2.
We have also won the Users Love Us reward badge, for receiving 20+ reviews with an average rating of 4.4 stars.
Users Love Us G2
We would like to thank all the users for sharing their love and giving us such amazing reviews. These awards give us the impetus to continue our journey in making customer delight our top priority and helping our customers win.
Here is what DataWeave’s team has to say about earning these badges:
“Winning these badges from G2 is not only a huge confidence booster but also validation from users that DataWeave’s solution and capabilities are making a difference for our customers.”
Krishnan Thyagarajan, COO and President, DataWeave
“DataWeave as a Leader and High Performer in these categories brings credibility and showcases the market share that the product holds amongst our valued customers. It also showcases that our customers value the proactive engagements driven by our customer success managers. A big kudos to our team at DataWeave and a big thank you to our customers for helping us achieve this recognition.”
Srikanth Ramanolla, Director of Customer Success, DataWeave
If you are one of our customers who have loved using our product, then I urge you to give us your review over here to continue providing value to wonderful customers like you.
Prime Day or not, brands need to make sure their Digital Shelf is well stocked, highly discoverable in crowded marketplaces, have the right offers and discounts to stay competitive, all while making sure their products have glowing reviews, ratings and optimized content. While this is a year-round effort, brands go the extra mile on Prime Day to make sure they’re putting their best foot forward.
Methodology To understand how brands adapted their digital shelf for Prime Day, we examined data insights across Amazon in 6 markets and compared the following brand KPIs:
Share of voice (SOV): The percentage of a brands products that appear in the search results page for relevant keywords on Amazon.
Availability: The percentage of products in stock on Amazon for Prime Day.
Additional discounts: The reduction in the listing price of a product during Prime Day compared to before or after the event to see how brands adapted their pricing strategies to stand out from rivals
Winning brands made sure their products were ‘highly’ discoverable
With all the global lockdowns, home entertainment hit a new high. So we looked at the word “TV” to see which brand had the highest share against this keyword during the Prime Day event.
In the US – Samsung won hands down with close to 15% SOV. LG came in at a not so close 2nd with 9% SOV.
In the UK – Samsung won again with a whooping 16.7% SOV with Sharp at # 2 at 12%.
Now let’s look at some key European markets
On Amazon Italy we saw a similar trend – Samsung & LG, neck to neck at 22% & 19% respectively.
Amazon Germany was no different – Samsung had the highest SOV at 15% and Philips far behind at 7%.
Samsung has such a strong association with the keyword TV. This means, when customers are searching for TVs on Amazon in these regions – the brand that has the largest selection up on display for them to choose from is Samsung! That’s definitely going to have a positive impact on sales, don’t you think?
Do you know which keywords you should be tracking for your brand? And do you know your Brand’s SOV against those keywords?
… & finally, an outlier!
In Amazon France, LG took the lead for a change – with 15% SOV. But we have Samsung not far behind at 13%.
Kudos to team Samsung!
Winning Brands kept a close eye on product availability
Poor product availability leads to lost sales. But not on Amazon Prime Day! Bigger brands that sell over 500 products created artificial scarcity by listing a chunk of products out of stock before the sale. And restocked aggressively during the sale.
In contrast, the smaller brands that sold fewer than 100 products didn’t dare make such bold moves and stayed stocked up even pre-event to avoid even a single day of lost sales.
Let’s look at some data from the US
The average availability for bigger brands selling 500+ products before the sale was 41% and then went up dramatically to 81.4% the day of the sale when they aggressively restocked.
Similar trend in the UAE
Availability pre-sale was 26.2% and during the sale shot up to 87.6%!
Various other markets displayed similar patterns. And this was only possible because these brands were able to track their availability with precision and plan their stock levels accordingly.
How are you tracking your availability across marketplaces? Do you know when your products are out of stock and are in immediate need of replenishment?
Winning Brands made strategic pricing and discounting decisions
Discounts matter. Period. And brands that use discounts strategically, win.
Let’s look at Airpods on Amazon in the US.
During the event, Apple had the highest SOV for the keyword Airpod at 7.5% followed by SkullCandy, an American audio accessory manufacturer at 5.6%.
Here’s the interesting part – during the sale Apple offered just 3.4% additional discounts while SkullCandy offered 32.1% additional discount to try and win sales from Apple. And looks like it worked! Apples SOV dropped from 13.5% before the event to 7.5% during the event and SkullCandy’s SOV improved
Now let’s look at the same data cut in the UAE – a market where Apple products have a fair penetration, but not as high as in the US. They needed a more aggressive discounting strategy in this market.
In the US, during the sale, Apple offered additional discounts on just 30% of products. However, in the UAE that number rose to 90% – a clear strategy to make their product pricing more attractive to customers to win sales
Discounts and markdowns aren’t always the answer to improving sales, but when used strategically can drive significant impact to your bottom line.
Are you tracking your competitor pricing? Do you know if they’re keeping tabs on your pricing strategy to get ahead of you?
Winning Brands made it to the Amazon Best Seller list
Amazon Best Sellers are products that have the highest sales on Amazon. Products with a higher Amazon Best Seller Rank have higher sales.
In the US, Nintendo had the highest share in the Electronics Best Seller category during the sale at 18.6%. Before the sale their share stood at 22.5% – so they lost ground a little ground with a 27.2% drop in their Best Seller share. While they gave additional discounts of 17%, only 27% of their catalogue was discounted.
But here’s a brand that knocked it out of the park! The Razer had an SOV of just 1.18% before the sale and during Prime Day it shot up to 6%! A clear indication that sales for the Razer spiked exponentially during Prime Day. Could this be because Razer offered 100% of their catalogue on an additional discount of 31%? It’s a bold move that could have paid off and contributed to super high sales.
Now let’s look at France – the Fashion Capital of the World and which brand came out on top in the Fashion Best Seller Category
Footwear brand Havaianas had the highest SOV on Prime Day (13.48%) Not too surprising because before the sale they were at 14.09%
Now let’s look at the Best Seller Rank – Lacoste secured BSR #1 at the event. Pat on the back for them because before the sale they were at Rank 46! And post-sale they dropped to #6. Definitely a combination of techniques involved here that got them from #46 to #1 at super speed!
What techniques have you tried to boost sales for your products on Amazon?
Brands that do not optimize their Digital Shelf risk losing out on their share of basket. If you’ve been thinking about how to optimize your Brands Digital Shelf, then get in touch & learn how DataWeave can help!
After last year’s blistering pace of e-commerce sales growth in the home category, we at DataWeave wanted to know how Prime Day 2021 discounts on home products would impact retailers and brands around the world.
We focused our analysis on how international retailers adapted their Prime Day pricing strategies to distinguish their offerings across eight home subcategories, including bed & bath, kitchen and pet supplies.
Our Methodology We tracked the pricing of products among 21 leading retailers in nine countries across five regions, including:
• The US (Ace Hardware, Amazon US, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Petco, PetSmart, Target and Wayfair US) • The UK (Amazon UK, Ebay, Etsy, OnBuy and Wayfair UK) • Europe (Amazon France, Amazon Germany and Amazon Italy) • The Middle East (Amazon Saudi Arabia and Amazon UAE) • Asia (Amazon Japan and Amazon Singapore)
The results showed some surprising differences among retailers and regions. See how retailers used pricing as a competitive strategy to win Prime Day sales in the home category, as well as international home brands that stood out for the discounts on their products.
Percentage of items with a price decrease
The US retailer with the overall highest percentage of home products with a price decrease for Prime Day was Amazon US (26.4%).
Home subcategories with the highest percentage of items with a price decrease per US retailer were:
• Ace Hardware: Power & hand tools (21.2%) • Amazon US: Furniture (36.3%), appliances (34.1%) and kitchen (28.3%) • Best Buy: Appliances (0.9%) • Home Depot: Power & hand tools (0.2%) • Lowe’s: Furniture (29.2%), power & hand tools (5.5%) and appliances (4.1%) • Petco: Pet supplies (11.6%) • Target: Bed & bath (37.9%), furniture (32.5%) and kitchen (11.5%) • Wayfair US: Pet supplies (31.9%), home & garden (25.6%) and bed & bath (24.8%)
The UK retailer with the overall highest percentage of items with a price decrease for Prime Day was Amazon UK (36.4%).
Home subcategories with the highest percentage of items with a price decrease per UK retailer were:
• Amazon UK: Appliances (41.7%), power & hand tools (39.5%) and furniture (36.4%) • Ebay: Smart home (10.5%), bed & bath (10.1%) and furniture (8.3%) • Etsy: Bed & bath (1.7%), kitchen and pet supplies (both 1.5%) • Wayfair UK: Kitchen (17.7%), bed & bath (10.8%) and home & garden (5.9)
In Europe, Amazon Germany had the overall highest percentage of items with a price decrease for Prime Day (27.3%).
Home subcategories with the highest percentage of items with a price decrease per European retailer were:
• Amazon France: Appliances (15.9%), power & hand tools (15.8%) and furniture (14.2%) • Amazon Germany: Power & hand tools (40.0%), appliances (33.7%) and pet supplies (28.4%) • Amazon Italy: Furniture (11.8%)
Across the Middle East & Asia, Amazon UAE had the overall highest percentage of items with a price decrease for Prime Day (41.6%).
Home subcategories with the highest percentage of items with a price decrease per retailer were:
• Amazon Saudi Arabia: Power & hand tools (53.8%), pet supplies (33.3%) and appliances (30.4%) • Amazon UAE: Appliances (55.8%), kitchen (49.9%) and pet supplies (49.0%) • Amazon Japan: Appliances (15.3%), power & hand tools (10.8%) and furniture (9.0%) • Amazon Singapore: Bed & bath (35.4%), appliances (30.2%) and power & hand tools (27.2%)
Magnitude of price decrease
The US retailer with the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease for Prime Day was Target (20.3%).
The home subcategories with the greatest magnitude of price decrease per US retailer were:
• Ace Hardware: Power & hand tools (14.3%) • Amazon US: Kitchen (21.0%), appliances and pet supplies (both 18.3%) and furniture (15.1%) • Best Buy: Appliances (8.7%) • Home Depot: Power & hand tools (17.7%) • Lowe’s: Power & hand tools (13.4%), furniture (13.0%) and appliances (10.8%) • Petco: Pet supplies (17.2%) • Target: Bed & bath (28.9%), smart home and kitchen (both 19.1%) and furniture (18.5%) • Wayfair US: Pet supplies (4.6%), kitchen (4.4%) and bed & bath (4.1%)
Brands with the greatest magnitude of price decreases per US retailer included:
• Ace Hardware: Zircon (48.6%), Smith\u0027s (36.1%) and DMT (30.0%) • Amazon US: Supply Guru (56.3%), Seresto (55.4%) and Advantage (53.4%) • Best Buy: Panasonic (29.1%), Farberware (16.6%) and Insignia™ (14.0%) • Home Depot: Husky (17.7%) • Lowe’s: Metabo HPT (43.2%), Dewalt (27.8%) and GZMR (26.5%) • Petco: Seresto (50.0%), Open Road Brands (45.4%) and Starmark (42.1%) • Target: Little Tikes (50.0%), Bobsweep (43.9%) and Shark (42.2%) • Wayfair US: Sorbus (57.8%), GE Appliances (45.9%) and Nu Steel (42.1%)
The UK retailer with the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease for Prime Day was Etsy UK (19.8%).
The home subcategories with the greatest magnitude of price decrease per UK retailer were:
• Amazon UK: Furniture (21.8%), power & hand tools (21.5%) and appliances (20.8%) • Ebay: Pet supplies (12.2%), appliances and furniture (both 12.0%) and bed & bath (10.0%) • Etsy: Pet supplies (44.3%), kitchen (18.1%) and bed & bath (14.2%) • Wayfair UK: Home & garden (12.2%), bed & bath (9.2%) and furniture (8.9%)
Brands with the greatest magnitude of price decreases across home sub-categories per UK retailer included:
• Amazon UK: Tefal (54.0%), Caterpack (51.6%) and Nylabone (49.9%) • Ebay: Bob Martin (59.8%), Fridgemaster (57.5%) and Tetramin (49.3%) • Etsy: Celebnails and vitrifiedstudio (both 49.5%), Deco-Den UK Supplies (46.5%) and Caxo Beauty (36.9%) • Wayfair UK: Breakwater Bay (41.1%), Zipcode Design (33.3%) and Heritage Brass (29.7
Among European retailers, Amazon Italy offered the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease for Prime Day (29.9%) among a total of 49 products.
The home subcategories with the greatest magnitude of price decrease per European retailer were:
• Amazon France: Bed & bath (11.7%), pet supplies (11.2%) and appliance (9.2%) • Amazon Germany: Kitchen (23.4%), power & hand tools (22.3%) and furniture (20.2%) • Amazon Italy: Furniture (29.9%)
Brands with the greatest magnitude of price decreases per European retailer included:
• Amazon France: Thermobaby (47.6%), Sinogoods (44.6%) and Tractive (40.0%) • Amazon Germany: Sage Appliances (56.5%), Nasum (51.7%) and Hikenture (49.2%) • Amazon Italy: Gifort (55.1%) and Wokkol (4.8%)
Across the Middle East and Asia, Amazon UAE offered the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease for Prime Day (15.3%).
The home subcategories with the greatest magnitude of price decrease per retailer were:
• Amazon Saudi Arabia: Furniture (18.0%), pet supplies (15.9%) and power & hand tools (15.8%) • Amazon UAE: Pet supplies (17.8%), appliances (16.4%) and kitchen (16.2%) • Amazon Japan: Kitchen (25.4%), furniture (14.5%) and bed & bath (13.6%) • Amazon Singapore: Kitchen (14.0%), furniture (11.1%) and appliances (8.0%)
Brands with the greatest magnitude of price decreases per retailer in the Middle East and Asia included:
• Amazon Saudi Arabia: American Baby Company (55.5%), Charmcollection (49.0%) and LG (46.9%) • Amazon UAE: Knorr (54.0%), Ocean Patio (50.0%) and Bikuul (48.2%) • Amazon Japan: キングジム (King Jim) (59.1%), Skylight (52.0%) and Cozyone, Hbada and Bauhutte (バウヒュッテ) (all 50.0%) • Amazon Singapore: Trademark Home (59.8%), Gaggia (54.5%) and Ely’s & Co. (46.8%)
Discounts before, during and after the event
The US retailer with the biggest overall home discount before Prime Day was Amazon US (27.0%). Amazon’s biggest pre-event discounts were on power & hand tools (28.6%), kitchen (28.3%) and furniture (28.0%).
Ace Hardware offered the biggest discounts on power & hand tools during and after the event (both 34.1%).
Amazon UK stood out for discounts this Prime Day. It was the UK retailer with the biggest overall home discount before (26.1%) Prime Day, with the deepest discounts on appliances (29.0%), power & hand tools (27.1%) and pet supplies (25.9%).
During Prime Day, Etsy and Amazon UK offered the biggest discounts (29.7% and 29.6%, respectively). Etsy’s top discounts were on pet supplies (40.0%), kitchen (32.5%) and bed & bath (28.1%), while Amazon UK’s top discounts were on power & hand tools (32.3%), appliances (31.4%) and pet supplies (28.9%).
After the event, Etsy had the biggest discount (29.8%), led by kitchen (34.3%), pet supplies (32.9%) and bed & bath (28.9%).
In Europe, Amazon Italy offered the biggest overall home discount before (31.6%) and during (29.4%) Prime Day. Amazon France offered the biggest discount after (21.4%) Prime Day.
In the pre-sales event, Amazon Italy gave the most generous discounts on pet supplies (31.6%) and appliances (9.3%).
During Prime Day, Amazon Italy offered the biggest discounts on pet supplies (31.6%), furniture (28.3%) and appliances (9.3%).
After Prime Day, Amazon France offered the biggest discounts on kitchen (24.6%), appliances (22.9%) and pet supplies (21.4%).
Popularity
In the US, among home products with high popularity, Amazon US offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (26.8%) and Target offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (23.6%).
For home items with moderate popularity, Amazon US offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (26.9%) and Target offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (18.9%).
Among home merchandise with low popularity, Amazon US offered both the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (23.8%) and the greatest magnitude of price decrease (15.9%).
Amazon UK stood out in this analysis of product popularity. In the UK, among home products with high popularity, Amazon UK offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (37.1%) and Etsy offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (20.9%).
For home items with medium popularity, Amazon UK offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (35.9%) and Etsy offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (24.4%).
Among home merchandise with low popularity, Amazon UK offered both the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (34.9%) and the greatest magnitude of price decrease (21.7%).
In Europe, Amazon Germany stood out for discounts for home products across all levels of popularity.
Among home goods with high popularity, Amazon Germany offered both the highest overall percentage of items with a price decrease (29.1%) and the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease (19.1%).
For home items with medium popularity, Amazon Germany offered both the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (28.4%) and the greatest magnitude of price decrease (19.8%).
Among home merchandise with low popularity, Amazon Germany offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (22.5%) and Amazon Italy offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (55.1%) related to a product count of 9.
In Middle East & Asia, among home items with high popularity, Amazon Singapore offered the highest overall percentage of items with a price decrease (35.6%) and Amazon Saudi Arabia had the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease (19.4%).
For home products with medium popularity, Amazon UAE offered both the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (47.5%) and the greatest magnitude of price decrease (16.0%).
Among home goods with low popularity, Amazon UAE offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (43.3%) and Amazon Japan had the greatest magnitude of price decrease (15.5%).
Prime Day 2021 hit a global home run
Overall, Prime Day 2021 offered consumers many generous deals on home products across every region.
According to our analysis, the retailers whose Prime Day pricing stood the most were Amazon US and Target in the US, Amazon UK and Etsy in the UK, Amazon Germany and Amazon Italy in Europe, Amazon UAE in the Middle East and Amazon Japan in Asia.
Consumers are moving beyond yoga pants. After a long year of pandemic lockdowns and the casual comfort of a homebody lifestyle, shoppers are giving their wardrobes a makeover. During this year’s Prime Day sales event, retailers around the world were well prepared for fashion shoppers’ enthusiasm for a fresh look.
That’s why we at DataWeave wanted to know how Prime Day 2021 discounts played a role in fashion marketing. We focused our analysis on how global retailers adapted their Prime Day pricing strategies to distinguish their offerings across seven fashion subcategories, including men’s and women’s shoes, and clothing & accessories.
Our Methodology We tracked the pricing of products among 16 leading retailers in nine countries across five regions, including:
• The US (Amazon US, Nordstrom, Target, Walmart and Zappos) • The UK (Amazon UK, Ebay, Etsy and OnBuy) • Europe (Amazon France, Amazon Germany and Amazon Italy) • The Middle East (Amazon Saudi Arabia and Amazon UAE) • Asia (Amazon Japan and Amazon Singapore)
This year’s results showed some impressive discounts among retailers and across regions. Let’s see how retailers used pricing as a competitive strategy to win Prime Day sales in the fashion category, as well as international fashion brands that stood out for the generous discounts on their products.
Percentage of items with a price decrease
The US retailer with the overall highest percentage of fashion products with a price decrease for Prime Day was Amazon US (34.5%).
Fashion subcategories with the highest percentage of items with a price decrease per US retailer were:
Brands with the greatest magnitude of price decreases on fashions per US retailer included:
• Amazon US: Free Soldier (57.3%), Rockport (52.0%) and Alvaq (48.9%) • Nordstrom: Little Words Project (60.0%), Robert Barakett and Nordstrom (50.0%) and Bonobos (49.1%) • Target: Cowboy Bebop, Avatar: The Last Airbender, YuYu Hakusho, Dragon Ball Z and Naruto (all 40.0%) • Walmart: Tredsafe (42.2%), C. Wonder and Crocs (both 30.0%) and Deer Stags (26.1%) • Zappos: Volcom (25.9%), O’Neill (20.8%) and Bandolino (20.5%)
In the UK, Ebay and Etsy tied for the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease on fashion products for Prime Day (both 14.7%).
The fashion subcategories with the greatest magnitude of price decrease per UK retailer were:
Brands with the greatest magnitude of price decreases per retailer in the Middle East and Asia included:
• Amazon Saudi Arabia: Dorina (48.7%), Cole Haan (40.2%) and Boss (39.7%) • Amazon UAE: Aldo (53.2%), Mvmt (51.4%) and Inkast Denim Co. (39.4%) • Amazon Japan: Face Trick Glasses (30.2%), モアプレッシャー (More Pressure) (23.7%) and アツギ (Atsugi) (21.7%) • Amazon Singapore: Bloch (49.0%), Adidas (38.5%) and Chums (31.4%)
Discounts before, during and after the event
Nordstrom was the US retailer with the biggest overall fashion discount before (39.0%), during (40.5%) and after (41.2%) Prime Day.
Nordstrom’s biggest pre-event discounts were on women’s shoes (44.2%), women’s clothing & accessories (36.6%) and men’s clothing & accessories (36.1%).
Women’s shoes (43.1%), men’s shoes (42.6%) and men’s clothing & accessories (39.5%) were the leading subcategories for Nordstrom’s discounts during Prime Day.
After the event, Nordstrom’s biggest discounts were for women’s shoes (42.5%), men’s shoes (42.2%) and men’s clothing & accessories (41.5%).
In the UK, Ebay offered the highest discounts before (43.7%), during (42.1%) and after (42.3%) Prime Day.
Before Prime Day, Ebay biggest discounts were on men’s clothing & accessories (47.9%), men’s shoes (43.9%) and watches (43.3%).
Ebay’s top discounts during Prime Day were on men’s clothing & accessories (45.3%), men’s shoes (44.6%) and women’s shoes (39.5%).
After the event, Ebay had the biggest discounts on men’s clothing & accessories (45.6%), women’s shoes (42.9%) and men’s shoes (41.9%).
In Europe, Amazon Germany dominated with the biggest overall fashion discounts before (27.1%), during (31.8%) and after (26.5%) Prime Day.
In the pre-sales event, Amazon Germany offered its most generous discounts on watches (27.5%), women’s shoes (12.6%) and men’s shoes (5.7%).
During Prime Day, Amazon Germany’s biggest discounts were on women’s clothing & accessories (36.8%), men’s clothing & accessories (32.5%) and watches (32.0%).
After Prime Day, Amazon Germany had the highest discounts on women’s clothing & accessories (34.1%), men’s clothing & accessories (27.6%) and watches (26.6%).
Popularity
In the US, among fashion products with high popularity, Amazon US offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (36.8%) and Nordstrom offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (29.8%).
For fashion items with medium popularity, Amazon US offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (35.2%), and Nordstrom offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (28.1%).
Among fashion merchandise with low popularity, Amazon US offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (27.2%) and Nordstrom offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (31.6%).
In the UK, among fashion products with high popularity, Amazon UK offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (31.6%) and Ebay offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (14.3%).
For fashion items with medium popularity, Amazon UK offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (32.5%) and Ebay offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (17.6%).
Among fashion merchandise with low popularity, Amazon UK offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (24.5%) and Etsy offered the greatest magnitude of price decrease (23.1%).
In Europe, Amazon Germany dominated discounts for Prime Day 2021 across all levels of popularity.
Among fashion goods with high popularity, Amazon Germany offered both the highest overall percentage of items with a price decrease (40.5%) and the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease (16.3%).
For fashion items with medium popularity, Amazon Germany offered both the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (32.5%) and the greatest magnitude of price decrease (16.5%).
Among fashion merchandise with low popularity, Amazon Germany offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (30.8%) and the greatest magnitude of price decrease (15.1%).
In Middle East & Asia, among fashion items with high popularity, Amazon Saudi Arabia offered the highest overall percentage of items with a price decrease (55.9%) and Amazon UAE had the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease (20.6%).
For fashion products with medium popularity, Amazon UAE offered both the highest overall percentage of items with a price decrease (49.3%) and the greatest overall magnitude of price decrease (17.8%).
Among fashion items with low popularity, Amazon UAE offered the highest percentage of items with a price decrease (46.1%) and Amazon Japan had the greatest magnitude of price decrease (21.5%).
Prime Day fashion deals galore
Overall, Prime Day 2021 gave global shoppers an abundance of generous discounts on fashion items.
According to our analysis, the retailers whose Prime Day pricing stood out the most were Amazon US and Nordstrom in the US, Amazon UK and Ebay in the UK, Amazon Germany in Europe, Amazon UAE in the Middle East and Amazon Japan in Asia.
