Canadian Retailer - The Marketing Issue - 15

The difference with these cards,
however, is that when you download
the Tim Hortons app and look at
the card through your smartphone,
the player on the card becomes animated. You see Carey Price flashing the leather to make a great save,
or Sydney Crosby going top-shelf to
score a goal.
Where's the value?

Now that you're using the app,
Tim's can gather a great deal of information that may have been previously unavailable to them about your
frequency of shop and the products
you like. This is where the pot of gold
lies for the retailer. Data that can be
turned into actionable knowledge.
Consumers in the future will
have a far different perception of
privacy than previous generations.
The digital native knows that you're
collecting data concerning their
shopping behaviours. In return, they have the expectation that
you'll do something with that information to make their shopping experience easier, entertaining and more valuable.
Research points out that millennials are extremely interested in experiential environments, seeking to customize their
worlds. Their loyalty often depends on a customer-centric
experience that's tailored to deliver on their wants and needs
right away. Their underlying need is that they want to feel engaged and valued as customers.
So, how do we accomplish this?

The aim, of course, is to hit millennials with an exciting
customer experience that makes them want to engage and
pull-the-trigger on a purchase. One major focus is leveraging
interactive in-store components like digital signs, kiosks,
touchscreens, and videos, making it easy for customers to get
what they want, when they want it.
Another focus area is mobile. Retailers desperately need to
turn "showrooming" into sales opportunities with omnichannel
marketing strategies. Tapping into how customers use their mobile phones while shopping inside the store can yield immediate results. Many shoppers go into stores with smartphones in
hand, looking for discounts, reading reviews over social networks, checking product details-and maybe even buying from
a competitor's website-all while using the store's Wi-Fi.
To take advantage of this behavior and combat potential competitive encroachment, retailers can use Wi-Fi splash pages to

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promote special in-store offers, or
use mobile location technology to
push messages or offers to consumers when they are physically near
a store. By knowing a smartphone
user's precise location within a store
through Bluetooth beacons, retailers
can deliver highly relevant and compelling content that can influence
purchase decisions, while giving
them more information about what
customers are looking at, and for
how long.
So, while today digital transformation dominates the conversation,
we must not forget that there is
another paradigm shift occurring-
how buyers are drifting away from
the coldness of the retail online
space and into the warmth of brickand-mortar. How well companies
address this shift today could ultimately determine their future success, helping them stay competitive
and relevant in the ever-expanding
digital frontier.
Find out how Microsoft Dynamics
for Retail can help you offer your
customers a unique value proposition,
delivering the connected, personal,
and relevant experiences that customers expect, while bridging the gap between in-store and digital experiences
with seamless CRM and e-commerce
solutions. To find out more, visit
www.msfttransform.ca/retail.

THE MARKETING ISSUE

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Canadian Retailer - The Marketing Issue