Retail Analytics: The Secret Weapon

Drowning in data? You're not alone. Retailers across the globe have collected a coffer of data over the years. Knowing how to analyze and mine that data to increase sales and reap bigger profits is the key to your company's success. Learn how to leverage your data to your strategic advantage like the best-in-class retail giants with the field-tested solutions and examples found in Retail Analytics.

Intended as a reference guide to help you develop a better understanding of retailers' language and analytic processes, Retail Analytics provides you with the tools you need to analyze data, manage inventory, increase sales, and anticipate trends. Based on author Emmett Cox's thirty years of retail experience at Walmart, Kmart, and GE Money Global, this comprehensive reference guide provides fact-based, field-tested analytic strategies that you can replicate in your own company, including how one retailer eliminated 20 percent of its merchandise mix and still saw a 30 percent sales gain.

Beginning with a fundamental understanding of retail terminology and concepts across a wide variety of backgrounds and experience levels, each chapter covers a different focus of the retail environment, including retail basics, the highly volatile apparel industry, the importance of geography and demographics, in-store marketing and presentations, organization structures, and common retail database designs.

Throughout the guide, Cox weaves numerous hands-on solutions, case studies, and real-world examples of data-driven projects from such leading retailers as Kmart, Coles Group Kmart Target, ASDA, Walmart, and others. You'll discover:

-The ABCs of retail: Know your SKUs, UPCs, EANs, JITs, POSs, and UCCs

-Why data without use is just overhead

-Celebrity marketing: how to monitor incremental increases in quantity and sales of each "celebrity" item

-Critical need-to-know information in apparel analytics

-Product placement: why diapers and chewing gum go well together

-Geography's role in retail

-Strategies for in-store marketing and presentation

-How traffic patterns have evolved over the years to suit customers' time restrictions

-Tips for setting up your store for success

-How to develop loyalty programs early on

-Consumer finance credit card retail perspective

-How Kmart developed the School Spirit loyalty program

Don't leave the fate of your business's success to chance. Discover how to apply the science of analytics to maximize results with the help of Retail Analytics.

"Analytics are driving the future of the retail industry. Cox's book is the only comprehensive source on these tools. Become familiar with its contents, or suffer at the prowess of competitors who did!"

— Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor, Babson College Coauthor of Competing on Analytics and Analytics at Work

"A must-read for any business executive or technologist wanting a quick, practical, and easy-to-understand summary of the power of retail analytics.??Every retailer is interested in increasing sales and profitability and reducing costs.?? Emmett's practical knowledge and real-life examples demonstrate how!"

— Lori J. Schafer, Coauthor of Branded! How Retailers Engage Consumers with Social Media and Mobility and Executive Advisor, Retail, SAS Institute