Study reveals consumer insight and multichannel marketing can help improve the bottom line for retailers

Ben Allott, Business Development Manager at Callcredit Information Group believes that if retailers want to continue to survive the economic downturn they need to be savvier with their marketing and start connecting the dots between the online and offline worlds to help drive consumers back to the high-street.

Consumers are adopting increasingly complex shopping behaviours to get what they want and many high street stores are being undercut by cheaper online rivals. Already this year we have seen three major retail outlets close their doors and join those that went into administration in 2012.

Sadly I fear that this news is a sign of what is to come if retailers don’t take into account the distinct shift from the high street to the online world when looking at buyer behaviour.

Callcredit’s latest analysis highlighted the need for this, showing how older age groups are combining their online shopping with offline. 28% of 51 to 60 year olds shop at supermarkets followed by 24% of 45 to 50 year olds, with only 14% of 18 to 24 year olds shopping at supermarkets.

With the current economic climate remaining gloomy and consumer spending growth at a mere 0.7%, retailers and marketers clearly need to do more to combine consumer insight and effective multichannel marketing to help counteract this seemingly never ending economic downturn and continue to build strong reputable brands that can be sustainable and generate profit.

This was further highlighted in our findings with 51 to 60 year olds not only in the top three for online and shopping at a supermarket but 16% of 51 to 60 year olds and 15% of 45 to 50 year olds also shopping via mail order. Alongside this 15% of 25 to 30 year olds also use mail order combined with their supermarket shopping.

With consumer spending at an all time low and the government only forecasting a growth of around 1.3% this year the need to understand your customer is ever more important. Independent research commissioned by Callcredit recently revealed 30% of consumers are finding it increasingly hard to put any of their salaries aside each month as financial pressures continue to squeeze take home pay.

The research showed that 45 to 54 year olds seem to be feeling the most pain with 40% confirming that they save nothing at all each month.

Consequently consumers are now under more pressure than ever in order to make ends meet and in isolation traditional marketing methods are often not effective enough in today’s market. Effective multichannel marketing provides an opportunity to target the right consumers – at the right time, through the right channel, and with the right message – which is vital when building an effective acquisition strategy.

Merchandising, direct mail, TV ads and promotions are not nearly as effective as they were 10 or 20 years ago as an increasing amount of businesses now focus on online marketing. This doesn’t mean the offline marketing strategies should be forgotten, but integrated with online and other forms such as mobile marketing to create a multichannel marketing strategy, which together will generate inbound marketing traffic that results in new leads, greater brand recognition and/or higher sales.

The findings also confirmed that younger shoppers combined with middle aged consumers are using devices such as tablet or mobile/smart phones to purchase goods.

When looking at products bought online compared with demographic this also highlighted a disparity between the ages with the older generation continuing to embrace online shopping with younger shoppers scoring lowest.

Changes in society and technology are clearly having a big impact on buyer behaviour and for retailers embracing technology and big data assets is a must if they want to acquire new customers, reach reactivate lapsers or retain and grow current relationships and compete against their competitors.

If retailers want to continue to trade via retail outlets and online they need to bring the two worlds together otherwise, as we have seen, the internet has a direct impact on the retailer’s sales per square meter return and when this drops it becomes more cost effective to run an outlet at a profit, which ultimately can lead to the closure of underperforming stores.