Analyze This: What Retailers Can and Can’t Do with Market Basket Analysis
As customer acquisition costs and competition increases, creating new revenue opportunities with existing customers is fast becoming the most cost-effective way to grow a retail business. Coinciding with this is an increase in the number of SKUs that retailers carry. As acquisition costs and SKUs continue to grow, it’s vital that retailers take a hard […]
Conscious Capitalism: Retailers Reaping the Benefits?
The concept of conscious capitalism was born in retail—co-created by John Mackey, one of the founders of Whole Foods. Arriving on the scene in 2013, the central tenet of conscious capitalism is that businesses should benefit the world around them, not just its traditional stakeholders (i.e. stockholders, board members, lenders, etc.). Businesses committed to conscious […]
Retail Store Heat Mapping: Hot or Not?
Store heat maps can be an enormous help when it comes to understanding the functionality of your stores and how customers behave inside them. But what is a heat map really? At its most basic, ‘heat map’ is just a hipper way of saying ‘a shaded matrix where single values in a matrix are represented […]
How American Eagle is Building the Denim Brand of the Future
While some of American Eagle Outfitters (AEO)’s peers are fighting to stay relevant (like Aeropostale) and others are rebranding to weather choppy tides (like Abercrombie & Fitch), it’s been smooth sailing for American Eagle. In the last year alone, AEO achieved a company record of over $4 billion in net revenue after 17 straight quarters […]
7-Eleven’s Tech Innovations, and How Other C-Stores Can Keep Up
With its expansive U.S. location count of 11,800, 7-Eleven dominates the convenience landscape. Beginning at its launch 92 years ago, the retailer has made the most of all sorts of innovations in order to establish and maintain its spot at the top. In 1927, it created the first iteration of the modern convenience store by […]
7 Ways to Crush it in Convenience Retail in 2019
2018 was simultaneously record-setting and full of change for c-stores. In-store sales reached a record high of $242.2 billion, and total sales went up by nearly 9 percent, driven mostly by increasing fuel costs. Despite this, growth in convenience retail is slow. Consider that in-store sales only increased 1.7 percent in 2018, attributable to declines […]
Five Below: What’s Behind this Discount Retailer’s Success?
Despite the name, things are really heating up for Philadelphia-headquartered discount retailer Five Below. Wordplay aside, the numbers speak for themselves. In 2018 alone, Five Below opened 125 new stores, and had opened an additional 35 in the first quarter of 2019, with plans for 145-150 more before the year is over. Adding to its […]
How to Increase Basket Size in Your C-Store
Given how challenging it is to get customers to venture past the gas pump and into c-stores, convenience retailers must ensure that once shoppers are in store, they’re purchasing as many items as possible. Yet, nearly 45% of c-store shoppers spend five minutes or less in stores, according to recent findings from GasBuddy. This is […]
CB4’s 1st Annual Convenience Store Loyalty Awards
Convenience store chains once thrived on driving impulse buys. Now, successful convenience retailers capitalize on unlocking customer loyalty. Implementing an effective loyalty program enables retailers to retain customers, increase market share, drive higher cart value, and communicate more broadly with customers. To ensure that they can successfully reap these benefits, however, retailers must provide an […]
Naming a Product “Corn Knuckles” and Other Private Label Pitfalls
Private label goods are now standard retail practice, especially in grocery. If executed well, a private label brand can drive growth in volume and in margins. By utilizing in-house brands, you essentially scoot your business down one spot on the value-chain, connecting directly with manufacturers and producers. In so doing, you leverage economies of scale […]
