Opinion: Digital Consumer Data Insights – Growing strategic importance for leading food retailers
Big data is of big value. The importance of being able to acquire and analyse data to be strategically competitive and create value is growing strongly. The international food retailing world is no different in this regard.
Leading food retailers that have a growing insight into the shopping behaviour of their customers have a powerful strategic advantage over their competitors and are much better able to manage across categories, but also to create added value and build stronger loyalty with their consumers.
Where initially the existence of a loyalty card was crucial in building these capabilities, today a sizeable online sales base and even more important the existence of a “shopping” app that people either use for online purchases or just as a shopping list for the traditional trip into store, are instrumental in fine-tuning the art of gaining crucial consumer insights.
In this continuous battle to stay the number one Dutch food retailer, Albert Heijn announced last week the launch of My Albert Heijn Premium, a paid subscription service linked to their AH mobile app. Based on an annual subscription rate of € 12, subscribers get many benefits compared to non-subscribing users of the app. And additional services aside, subscribers get an annual financial benefit many times the value of the subscription fee.
The big objective behind this latest app addition is to secure higher consumer loyalty in general, stimulate the penetration and usage frequency of the app and build buying behaviour data.
Many might be sceptical about this growing level of consumer behaviour monitoring. However from the perspective of the business model of leading retailers who still want to be leading in 10 years time, it is crucial for them to gain these insights. Albert Heijn’s example is just the next step in the strategic digital data collection rat race and will doubtless be followed by many new initiatives.
Big Brother will keep watching us!!