Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/528948
efore the advent of Big data, mass advertising was comparable to the pitches of those fragrance sellers who stand at the entrances of department stores, singing out lines like: Are you interested in a floral scent? How about a woodsier one? I have a great new citrus fragrance I think you'd really like! B seeing the invisiBLe As retAilers And lAndlords embrAce big dAtA, so too will consumers welcome the personAlized mArketing it yields By Rebecca Meiser J u l y 2 0 1 5 / S C T 35 i L L u s t r a t i o n : m a r i o W a g n e r "for many, the immediate response to this firing of questions is to run a million miles in the opposite direction — especially if you're male," said Christopher sanderson, co-founder of the futures Laboratory, a London-based trend forecasting consulting firm. Yet, for many years this was the sort of advertising model that retailers operated under: Blast consumers with large-scale promotions and big, 100-page mailers and hope something will catch the eye. increasingly, however, retailers are turning away from relying on hope to grab attention, thanks to Big data — a term that refers to the trail of information we leave each time we make a purchase online, "like" a retailer's facebook post or allow our phone to track where we go. using in-house statisticians or outside firms, retailers are getting a more nuanced view of what their cus- tomers like, where they live and the sorts of things they buy. "With Big data, retailers can create a 360-degree view of who their customers are," said mark van rijmenam, a netherlands-based strategist. "they can then create the right products for the right price for their customer." data analytics — the science of breaking down and interpreting all that "big data" — can pinpoint where people like to shop, how much time they spend in a store and which streets they frequent most often. such information helps develop- ers and brokers determine, for instance, the best location for a new store, or where to place a billboard for the maximum number of views. Could Big data put an end to those aforementioned perfume-advertising gauntlets? in a 2015 report about the £345 billion (about $520 billion) global beauty market, one of the largest