Each year, everyone asks us about trends we see at the International Council of Shopping Centers Convention. This year at RECon, three different trends really stood out in my mind:
1.The first trend that we spotted is that many manufacturers are attempting to get into the retail business, initially through outlet stores. These business people understand the advantage that customer analytics brings to the decision making process. They won’t hesitate to invest in information to help them make real estate, marketing, and merchandising decisions.
2.The second trend that we saw at ICSC was the growth in inquiries into customer analytics by the fashion business. In the past fashion retailers have had reluctance to use data to make location decisions. We found this year, that many of these same fashion manufacturers and retailers were determined to use customer analytics to not only enhance their real estate decisions, but to help them with merchandise selections.
3.The biggest question we were asked at ICSC was related to the overall business climate. As a company that only likes to deal in facts, we explained to our clients that our business has never been better and that our clients are continuing to grow their business. One can only surmise that people with good information can make informed decisions in good times and bad. And, with good information, when prices are down, people shop on sale.
Posted by Rich Hollander
Tags: Customer Analytics, fashion retailers, ICSC, Outlet Malls
This entry was posted
on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under Customer Analytics, Expansion Strategy, ICSC, Marketing, Merchadising, Outlets, Retail, Retail Economy, Retail Expansion, Site Selection.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.