The majority of retailers worldwide plan to increase their use of data and analytics this year, according to the newly released Exacttarget Marketing Cloud 2014 State of Marketing study. The cross-industry survey, completed by Salesforce.com and summarized in a Business Wire press release, examined responses from 2,600 mid- to senior-level marketing managers. To augment digital marketing campaigns, merchants plan to use retail customer intelligence fueled by big data to more effectively target and convert consumers.

The plan is a wise one, according to Forrester Research. As reported in Forbes, Forrester highlighted big data capabilities in its top tech trends for 2014 and beyond. Technological advancements in data collection and analytics will help firms surpass previous limitations in customer engagement and retail management. Predictive applications draw on information such as POS data, social data and syndicated data, which can help anticipate customers' needs to offer solutions in real time.

However, Gary Edwards, chief customer officer at Mindshare Technologies, wrote in an article for Retail Customer Experience that local businesses still lag behind on big data. Store managers often lack the resources and time to implement strategies for actionable data analysis. Therefore, companies should empower local store supervisors to develop programs and improve customer experiences by providing them with data and insights based on retail reports.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, January 8th, 2014 at 6:28 am .