Lidl Halts Expansion Plans in NJ

December 11, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in mobile, in-store, retail, apps, social, retail, foot traffic, grocery, lidl

Multiple outlets are reporting that German-based grocer Lidl has halted expansion plans in New Jersey. The news comes on the heels of inMarket’s Lidl Report Card, which identified decreasing foot traffic at the chain after its U.S. debut in June 2017.

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inMarket CMO Cameron Peebles explained to Supermarket News today that Lidl’s strong opening in foot traffic eventually fell into late-summer decline. Peebles also said that changes to Lidl’s expansion strategy could potentially be a result of disappointing traffic performance, saying “Consumers vote with their feet in the retail environment.” He speculated that perhaps the brand had failed to retain customers after they made their first exploratory visits to the store.


NJ.com also mentions the recent inMarket Report Card in its story: "Lidl's June success doesn't seem to have maintained itself… While the low-cost grocer has seen some initial success, they'll need to inspire customer loyalty through great in-store experiences if they want to truly gain SOV (share of visits) from the established players in the space."


For a deep dive into foot traffic trends around Lidl’s U.S. expansion, download the full report card at inmarket.com/insights.
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Is the Lidl U.S. Expansion Succeeding? 

October 10, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in mobile, in-store, retail, apps, social, mobile, retail, grocery, amazon, lidl, walmart

Lidl -- the German grocer operating over 10,000 stores across 28 countries -- entered the U.S. market for the first time in June, 2017.  It's a bold move at a time when major e-tailers like Amazon are diving into brick-and-mortar retail, and established low-cost players like Walmart becoming more aggressive than ever.

Lidl selected nine launch markets across North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia for its first U.S. stores. To understand their traction, we dug into inMarket Location Data -- which aggregates store visits across all retailers in the U.S., based on a pool of 50 million consumers per month -- to see how Lidl has fared thus far, and if there was an impact on its competitors.

(inMarket uses this same proprietary, first-party location data to power online-to-offline advertising campaigns for the world’s leading brands and retailers. If you're interested in putting our location data to work for your brand, contact us today.)

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In brief: Lidl started hot in June -- appearing to acquire visits from competitive retailers like Walmart, BI-LO and Harris Teeter. That success was short-lived, however, as traffic dropped off in July and August.

Consumers vote with their feet, and inMarket’s location engine is able to precisely measure if Lidl’s competitive offering is resonating and driving consistent foot traffic. Check out the full report over at inmarket.com/insights today.

 

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Crocs Tops inMarket Back-to-School Foot Traffic Rankings

September 19, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in retail, inmarket, foot traffic, location data, data, big data, crocs, footwear, mobile location data

Are Crocs cool? According to inMarket Location Data, the answer is... yes.

Crocs has topped inMarket's Back-to-School Retail rankings for 2017, drawing the largest spike in foot traffic of any retailer during the busy July/August shopping period. Aeropostale, Staples, PacSun and Kids Foot Locker also had strong draws druing the 2017 back-to-school rush. 

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Contrarily, Neiman Marcus, Gap and Banana Republic all saw dips in foot traffic this summer. All three have announced store closures in the past 10 days.  

You can download the full report today at www.inmarket.com/insights. If you're interested in learning more about the rankings, just give us a shout over at www.inmarket.com/contact.

 

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Retail Watch: Signs Point to Nine West Store Closures

July 21, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in mobile, in-store, retail, apps, social, mobile, retail, inmarket, location data, store closures

The New York Post is reporting that embattled retailer Nine West is close to shutting down, according to multiple sources.

"Nine West Holdings, owned by private equity firm Sycamore Partners, is mulling an auction proceeding that could spur a liquidation of the chain, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Licensing firms have been approached to determine their interest in the company’s brands, which include Anne Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, l.e.i., Givenchy Jewelry and 14 others, which are sold in department stores and which have been hit hard by the shopping mall downturn."

The news isn't surprising if you look at the inMarket Location Data: In June, inMarket found that Nine West ranked last for customer loyalty in the non-grocery retail category -- behind failing retailers like Wet Seal and bebe.

While many might take this to be another sign of the retail apocalypse, we see it as a sign that retail is instead undergoing a massive evolution. There's a blend of online and offline happening in both directions. While retailers like Nine West head for closures, e-commerce giants like Amazon are jumping into the real world with their Whole Foods acquisition. There's a ton of value into serving customers in the here-and-now. It's up to the existing brick-and-mortar stores to adopt data-driven, e-commerce style practices that improve the in-store experience and attract customers back to the store. If they don't, the Amazons of the world will. 

E-commerce won't kill brick-and-mortar retail, the same way VHS didn't kill the cinema. But -- offline will have to adapt.

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Ranking Retailers from Top to Bottom on Customer Loyalty; inMarket Utilizes its Industry Leading Location Data to Project Growth and Closures

June 7, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in location, mobile, in-store, retail, advertising, location data, data, trends

Customer loyalty is vital to business health. Today, thanks to mobile location data, we can quantify customer loyalty and its impact on a business. In this report, we’re looking specifically at the retail industry, where each week it seems like there’s another round of mass store closures. But despite the “retail-pocolypse,” there are a few retailers that are expanding and thriving. What do they have in common? Loyal customers.

In our latest inSights report, we identify the top 10 and bottom 10 retailers for customer loyalty, based on inMarket location data. This first in a series of reports across brick and mortar verticals uses mobile location data from spring 2017 to identify customer loyalty at major U.S. retailers. The full report is available today at www.inmarket.com/insights. 

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The findings from inMarket’s Spring 2017 data show a clear correlation between low customer loyalty and announcements of store closings, while high-loyalty retailers are actually expanding in the face of the predicted “retail apocalypse.” Thus far in 2017, five out of the top 10 retailers for customer loyalty have announced store expansions. Contrarily, eight out of the bottom 10 retailers for customer loyalty are either closing stores, laying off employees or freezing growth in 2017. 

inMarket uses machine learning in order to analyze billions of data points and paint a picture of consumer behavior’s influence on business. This retail loyalty ranking is based on inMarket location data from over 50 million anonymous consumers -- focusing specifically on repeat device visitation as an indicator of customer engagement, loyalty and retention.  

In addition to predicting market trends, inMarket uses location data to power its suite of industry-leading ad products such as its Lapsed Shopper Program -- which launched in March as an equalizer for brick and mortar retail against e-commerce. Retailers are recovering over 40% of their lapsed shoppers with the program, which capitalizes on store visit data the same way online retailers uses web visit data to retarget shoppers. 

For more information on these rankings or to find out your business's loyalty score, contact us today. 

 

 

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eMarketer Features inMarket Research on Millennial Shopping Habits 

May 23, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in location, mobile, retail, inmarket, adtech, foot traffic, data, millennials, emarketer, research, grocery

eMarketer -- the leader in e-business data + research -- has featured inMarket's latest inSights report on generational shopping trends. We've included an excerpt below, and encourage you to check out the full story here

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According to InMarket's new "Foot Traffic Power Rankings," millennials show a distinct preference for discount options when it comes to brick-and-mortar shopping.

The rankings are based on analysis of foot traffic to physical stores, using mobile location data from January through April 2017. Rankings are determined by frequency of visits compared with the category average for each generation. 

For the general retail category, the top three brands were discount purveyors of apparel. The No. 1 brand was Ross Stores, followed by privately held Rainbow and then Burlington Stores. Bridal chain DaVinci and home-furnishing giant Ikea rounded out the list.

You can download the full report over at inmarket.com/insights 

 

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The Future Of Advertising In A Responsive World

April 13, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in mobile, retail, apps, mobile advertising, advertising, beacons, adtech

What does the next decade have in store for advertisers? 

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In 2007, pre-iPhone, many of us would have failed to predict exactly how far we would evolve regarding interpersonal communication, consumer behavior and pure tech reliance. For anyone who has lived and breathed communication over the past 10 years, the changes have been rapid, sweeping, consolidating and sometimes surprising. Many of us have gone from “why text when I could call?” to “don’t call me unless it’s an emergency” in that span.

Today, our reliance on mobile and our “always online” mentality have carved a path for marketers and communicators across industries to engage us in new ways. The traditional touch points are gone, supplanted by a magic window into consumer behavior that goes everywhere and does everything for us.

Heavy mobile reliance coupled with improved micro-location tech and better conversational UI have sparked a new trend that shows no signs of slowing down: responsive environments.  

What are responsive environments?

At inMarket, our tech stack creates responsive environments in thousands of commerce locations using the smartphone as the interface. In a nutshell, we produce and maintain beacons — small bluetooth sensors — in locations ranging from retail to restaurants to bars. We partner with top brands to proactively engage people on their phones precisely when they enter a location, or passively to understand the consumer journey and predict when shoppers are “due” for their next store visit or night out.

Beacon tech helps marketers deliver impactful messages when the consumer is most receptive and eliminates wasted advertising. Meanwhile, major brands like Citibank have leveraged similar tech in their ATM kiosks, while Starwood Hotels & Resorts has tested it to improve the guest experience. 

But beacons in commerce locations are just the tip of the iceberg. Responsive environments are now being created by voice-controlled devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Simply by placing these devices in a room, consumers are flipping on digital benefits — like music, search or product ordering — via conversational UI. As the centerpiece of the automated home, voice-controlled devices could be a potential hotbed for branded engagement into the next decade. 

What does this mean for marketers?

So what will ads on these in-home platforms actually sound like? We already know what static ads sound like on Pandora, Spotify, or the radio. But consumers will demand even more contextual relevance from in-home responsive environments.

In places of commerce, contextual relevance is present in the most impactful engagements. For example, it’s the shopping list that knows you’ve walked into the store, the entertainment brand that buys your first song on the bar jukebox, and the beer brand that wants to remind you to check your fantasy lineup. If we use this blueprint to predict in-home engagement, then perhaps the in-home device knows that Friday is pizza night and can suggest special offers from nearby restaurants, or that the traffic on your commute is light so you’ll have time to stop for coffee.

From the marketing perspective, responsive environments might seem like a far-flung, futuristic concept. But thanks to mobile, many places are already connected, helping shoppers decide what to buy. Today’s brand media mix needs to incorporate a place-based strategy that helps shoppers make purchase decisions in seamless and natural ways.

As we enter the post-“app for everything” era, marketers can look at how people already use mobile in everyday locations to inform their campaigns. Is your brand a highly visual destination that facilitates social sharing? Help your most talked-about places come alive, proactively, to facilitate that sharing. Are you an OTC medicine brand? Tap mobile location to turn the phone into a shopping assistant during cold and flu season. Are you a CPG food brand that targets millennial moms? Help that shopper decide what to buy via her recipes app inside a grocery store.

As we inch ever closer to the next decade, we’ll continue to be wowed by the amazing tech that not only grabs headlines, but also changes the way we go about our day-to-day lives. The infrastructure for a smarter world is already in place — in our homes, stores and bars. The fun part will be watching how consumer behavior evolves thanks to the magic of technology.

This story original appeared in Forbes

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Retailer Apps Struggling to Gain Traction Inside the Store

November 1, 2016 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in location, location-based advertising, mobile, in-store, instore, retail, apps, mobile usage, mobile advertising

In its latest whitepaper, inMarket takes a look at consumer mobile usage habits inside of stores.

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The findings are a bit surprising: Social, which makes up a huge percentage of mobile usage outside the store, accounts for just 4% of mobile momments inside the store. On the flip side, approximately 55% of mobile moments direclty relate to the purchase decision.

The image above provides a nice overview. If you're interested in a deeper dive, you can download the full whitepaper here

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