Test, Measure, Repeat, Succeed—In Stores

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

When e-commerce really started to take off a few years back, it didn’t take cross-channel retailers long to realize the incredible value of the channel’s traceability. Behind the scenes, e-commerce site data—down to the click—was analyzed and scrutinized like a UFO at Area 51. Data scientists in lab coats crunched numbers and ran A/B tests under the watchful eyes of suit-clad executives, all unbeknownst to the customer. And thus, in a matter of months, the retail industry learned more about consumer demand patterns than it had in a hundred years.

The inherent data gathering advantage in the digital retail environment was exciting. It still is exciting. It’s fueled fast growth; as e-commerce retailers have honed their craft with the aid of all this wonderful data, the consumer’s online experience has improved exponentially. Offers and promotions have become targeted and incredibly relevant thanks to the ease with which personal preference and browsing history data can be gathered and analyzed. In-demand merchandise has become more visible and more readily available thanks to sales and merchandising data collected online. Time to fulfillment has been reduced dramatically thanks to the analysis of that data and its impact on allocation decisions. To the retail data scientist, the Internet is a Petri dish in a highly controlled environment, and perfection of the experiment seems within reach.

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