Retailers dig a “gold mine” of customer data for business

Customer shopping behaviors are important data for retailers.

After a month of buying diapers for her child at a supermarket, this customer received an advertisement to buy these diapers, but with a size suitable for her child's age, so this customer happily continued shopping without feeling bothered.

That is one of the ways to "read" data that retailers are applying to approach customers with the right needs, increase efficiency, marketing, especially in the race to retain customers betweensystems.

Leverage your customer database

During the recent Tet holiday, consumers were "dizzy" with promotional programs. Promotional programs were adjusted daily, even hourly, especially near Tet.

Ms. Le Thi Mai Linh - Executive Vice President of Central Group, owner of Big C supermarket chain in Vietnam - said this is a race of the moment, supermarkets must promptly grasp every change in the market.

Based on customer purchase data, the system launched promotions to attract customers to come back and shop.

According to Ms. Linh, the management team looks at data to know customers' shopping trends and makes quick analysis at that time.

"We look at the number of products sold, sometimes customers tend to buy discounted products, sometimes they choose products with gifts. For example, near Tet, customers buy fruit to stock up, we design a fruit discount program. As a result, purchasing power at this system during Tet has increased sharply beyond expectations" - Ms. Linh said.

Big data will reveal a lot of information about customers' psychology and shopping behavior.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Son, general director of Tiki, said that when it was still a small e-commerce site four years ago, all customer information from identity, age, gender to every interaction, click... on this e-commerce site was kept.

"Vietnamese businesses' ability to make data is still limited, so to know exactly what their customers buy, where they buy it, whether they are male or female..., we cooperate with the world's leading partners to exploit it. Up to now, we have achieved an accuracy rate of 25%, quite high compared to a few percent of other retailers" - Mr. Son said.

Many retailers are also beginning to recognize the importance of “customer data” to increase sales efficiency.

The handshake between Saigon Co.op and Nielsen Research Company at the end of 2017 is considered a historic turning point for both.

Ms. Nguyen Linh Trang, deputy director of Co.op Smile, said that after telecommunications, retail is the field with the most customer data.

Each customer transaction is a data, they automatically connect to many information tables, separate information about the product, the store, time of purchase...

According to Ms. Trang, when there is data, everything changes a lot. Adding or cutting certain items is based on the actual developments of the whole market. Data is the basis for retailers to work with suppliers.

"In fact, managing a hypermarket is not as difficult as a small convenience store because the number of products on display will be limited. In particular, finding potential customers to promote shopping habits as well as optimizing the logistics industry" - Ms. Trang said.

Knowing what customers want is the key to winning.

In fact, since 2016 Saigon Co.op has had a data analysis department. Up to now, this department has about 30 people working on analyzing data, habits, and consumer behavior.

Although all decisions of Saigon Co.op in developing commodity strategy and management were previously researched and surveyed based on this data. However, everything is still not clear and transparent.

"Since collaborating with Nielsen to analyze data, we have gone into more detail and specifics, the data has been "cleaner", giving more accurate customer analysis results, greatly supporting the system of promotional programs, sales, and product line optimization..." - Ms. Trang said.

However, the decision to share consumer goods data with partners was a difficult one, and one that the entire Saigon Co.op board had to consider. For over 20 years, this retailer has kept its customer data and has not opened it to anyone.

Also investing in exploiting customer data, according to Ms. Mai Thi Lan Van, marketing director of Adayroi, investing in technology to exploit big data is a must for retail businesses.

The retail pie is increasingly fragmented, the shift to online shopping is inevitable and businesses must understand the new customer base. Moreover, Vietnamese consumers choose based on price, supplier reputation, and then product quality.

"Our orientation is to access customer information accurately and provide them with the information they need through technology applications so that customers are taken care of without feeling bothered," Ms. Van analyzed.

Vietnamese consumers, as well as consumers in Asia, have the fastest changing consumer behavior. Products that were popular a few years ago may no longer be sold, let alone lose their popularity.

"The data mining, therefore, does not necessarily take all of the past 20 years and only the last few years. However, it also shows that everything is happening very quickly," Ms. Trang said.

Mining data to "understand" customers

According to Mr. Tran Anh Tuan - Director of The Pathfinder Consulting Company, most Vietnamese businesses have not invested and exploited data systematically to increase revenue and business value in the digital age. Meanwhile, retaining a loyal customer is less costly and economical than finding a new customer.

"Keeping loyal customers is very important, requiring effective customer care and follow-up programs, which can only be done when there is a database and accurate analysis. Understanding what customers buy, thereby attracting them to continue buying and using the product for a long time" - Mr. Tuan said.