April 5, 2010
Today, the increasing presence of mobile Web-enabled devices, such as the iPhone; Web 2.0 technologies; social networking sites such as FaceBook; and the latest overhyped phenomenon known as Twitter have rapidly exposed retailers to the realization that a proliferation of customer touchpoints is creating new pressure to rethink their customer strategies. And even more importantly, these consumer technologies are creating urgency around supporting the necessary resource/capacity to enable retailers to respond to trends in near/real time.
Retail CRM is the strategy used for managing customer relationships based on a retailer's ability to gather, analyze and apply a range of data sources (for example, POS transactions, customer information, loyalty programs, customer traffic, purchased third-party consumer purchase or census data). Historically, retail CRM focused mainly on customer interactions in the store. But as an increasing number of customers shop across channels, a retailer's ability to understand customer segments - particularly the most profitable customers - regardless of where they shop will become a critical competency.
