Xtreme Data Warehousing – Retailing Use Cases – 1

In store experience is crucial in our shopping process.  There are some great organizations that study patterns and behaviours about how we shop, buy and generally behave.

In an article from the newspaper last year (August 30, 2005, Washington Post, by Ariana Eunjung) I read about what Best Buy is doing in California in the area ofcustomer segmentation and profiling.  It was called "Searching for ‘Jill’ customers in the shopping jungle".

In the article it talks about how through the process of sizing up it’s customers Best Buy is changing the way they approach certain customers.  Doing some segmentation or profiling they came up with a number of types:

  • ‘Jill’ – The Soccor-mom type who is the main shopper for the family, but avoids electronic stores, smart, confident, intimidated by the environment and in a hurry.
  • ‘Buzz’ – young tech enthusiast
  • ‘Barry’ – the wealthy professional’
  • ‘Ray’ – the family man

This was inspired by Columbia University Professor Larry Seldon’s book "Angel Customers and Demon Customers" and a great example of Strategic Intelligence.  They are working to turn it into Tactical Intelligence by changing the way the Associates in the stores work with these people. 

But why not take it out of the abstract and start attaching the store experience with the the use of:

  • Image Capture
  • Loyalty Cards

This helps address the annonimity that exists in this sort of environment.

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