The rise of online shopping has put the world's physical retail industry on pins and needles. The continued decline in physical store sales has made them continue to pursue new opportunities, eager to know how to avoid being swept away by this wave of online shopping. After being eliminated, Macy's, Inc., one of the largest department store chains in the United States, has made a beautiful digital transformation of this century-old store through the collection and analysis of huge amounts of data. From 1 to 870 - Five-pointed red stars all over the United States
The first Macy's department store was founded by Rowland Hussey Macy in 1858 at the intersection of Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue in New York. The famous "Red Star" trademark comes from due to his past sailing experiences. The operating rights of Macy's Department Store have changed several times in the past 150 years. First, it was acquired by Isidor & Nathan Straus in 1887, and expansion began in the same year. Then in 1902, the flagship store was moved to the current Herald Square in New York. location.
In 1918, Macy’s Department Store’s turnover had grown from US$85,000 in the first year to US$36 million. It was publicly listed in 1922 and actively expanded outwards. In 1945, when Macy's began to expand to the western United States and acquired the O'Connor Moffatt & Co. department store in San Francisco, it renamed its stores two years later Macy's, including another store in Union Square in San Francisco today. Macy's flagship store.
In the following decades, especially in the 1980s, Macy's borrowed billions of dollars in debt to acquire other department stores, but it also took on too much debt, which eventually led to its collapse in 1994. It was acquired by Frated Department Stores, Inc., and then went through many mergers and acquisitions and store openings, including the acquisition of May Co. in 2005, and renamed all its department stores to Macy's Department Store in 2007. Macy's, Inc. is established.
After many department store acquisitions and name changes, Macy’s has expanded its brand from a department store in New York 150 years ago to 45 states in the United States, and even overseas to Puerto Rico and Guam, total*** It has 870 stores, including Macy's, Macy's Backstage, Bloomingdale's, Bloomingdale's Outlet, Bluemercury and other brand names. Its sales in 2015 were US$27.1 billion. It is one of the largest retail groups in the United States and is currently located in Herald Square, New York. Its flagship store covers an area of ??1.1 million square feet, making it the second largest department store in the world.
In addition to physical stores, Macy’s Group also has three online shopping websites: macys, bloomingdales, and bluemercury. Products can be sold to more than 100 countries through these websites. . Macy's Department Store combines physical and digital battlefields to create a comprehensive customer experience
Macy's Department Store started to enter online shopping very early. After Macy's went online in 1996, it announced its entry into online shopping through Macy's in 1998. shopping market, and successively invested US$230 million in online shopping in 2006 and 2007, but it was not until 2010 that they began to gradually promote their online virtual and offline physical integrated sales strategy, and began to get on the right track. In the most recent months of November and December 2015, Macy's alone had nearly 17 million orders, an increase of 25% over the same period last year. In December, it generated more than 1 billion US dollars in business on digital platforms. Forehead.
Macy’s has made many efforts to integrate online virtual channels with offline physical channels. The most noteworthy ones include their online shopping and online pickup (Buyonline, pickupinstore) service, making full use of Macy’s advantages of multiple physical stores. Consumers can directly go to the store to pick up the goods after shopping online. In addition to giving consumers a convenient pickup experience, it can also increase the flow of people in the physical store. Macy's online and offline integration can also be seen from the perspective of cash flow. They have a "MyWallet" service that allows consumers to use the same account for online and offline payments.
In addition, Macy’s also actively uses new technologies and massive data to understand Macy’s core consumer demographics, which also helps them catch up with the rapidly changing market. After all, Entering a new shopping battlefield, Macy's not only has to compete with other department stores, but also with other online shopping, including the king of online shopping - Amazon.
As a department store with a history of more than 150 years, Macy’s has had several firsts in the retail industry. First of all, Macy’s was the first in the history of retail to hire a woman as a supervisor. It was also the first company to adopt a single price for the same product across the country and to run special offers in newspaper advertisements. Now, Macy's also uses huge amounts of data to conduct dynamic pricing analysis and adjustments and provide a customer-centric shopping experience. Huge amounts of data assist in real-time adjustments to competitive pricing strategies
Speed ??is the first advantage that huge amounts of data bring to Macy’s. For Macy’s, it is because they can take advantage of instant or near Real-time analysis of huge amounts of data allows them to gain the advantage of flexibility in price adjustments compared with other companies.
As one of the world's largest retail department store groups, it is very important to ensure that their product pricing is sufficiently competitive. However, pricing adjustments are very important for products with a large number of product types, a large number of stores, and a wide distribution. It's quite complicated for Macy's. For example, if a competitor stores sells the same specific products as them, Macy's needs to flexibly adjust the prices of the same products in stores near the competitor to gain a pricing advantage. However, the products may be a variety of men's clothing, women's clothing, There are many kinds of accessories, household items, etc., but in contrast, other Macy's department stores that are not near competitors do not need to adjust their prices and can just maintain the original prices.
Macy’s has a total of 870 stores. Each store has tens of thousands of products, and may need to adjust prices at any time in response to various factors. In the past, they used a weekly cycle. Adjust next week's price based on last week's sales data. The entire data volume is about 2TB, which takes about 30 hours at a time. In addition, Macy's physical stores are open seven days a week, so the latest Sales data cannot be included in the calculation.
In order to respond to the most suitable pricing strategy more immediately, Macy's introduced massive data analysis in 2011 to improve the speed and efficiency of analysis and increase their competitive advantage. Now it analyzes the best of all products The price adjustment time has been shortened from 30 hours to less than 2 hours, and the frequency of adjustment can be changed from once a week to several times a day, and the prices of online and offline physical stores are at the same time. Adjustments can only be made by relying on real-time analysis of huge amounts of data. Huge amounts of data create a customer-centric shopping experience
For the retail industry, as important as providing competitive pricing is to provide every customer who comes to the door with the products they want most. For online shopping websites, it is necessary to be able to analyze which of their own products meet the needs of the customer in a very short period of time when the customer connects to the website and starts browsing the products, and then in just one minute Present these products in front of the customer's screen. After all, if you are too late to provide the product the customer wants, he may leave the website in the next second.
Macy’s department store has a team of more than 1,600 people. It can use huge amounts of data to evaluate customers’ preferences and then display the things customers like on the shopping website to optimize customers’ online shopping experience. Shopping conversion rate, this strategy can better reduce inventory costs and optimize profits.
Macy’s real-time analysis can rely on the customer’s personalization and relevance as much as possible, including the products he has purchased before or the content he has posted on social networking sites, to recommend the products they need. In addition to preferences, it can also provide recommendations based on the customer's location. For example, if a customer enters a Macy's physical store but does not purchase any products, Macy's will send an electronic coupon to the customer in the hope that the customer will next time Can come again.
In addition, because Macy’s Department Store has both virtual and real channels, customers often browse products on the website first and then go to physical stores to see the products. Therefore, Macy’s Department Store must create a A complementary experience between online virtual channels and offline physical channels. When customers shop on the Macy's website, they can experience their MyMacy's shopping service. This service includes the ability to instantly check whether a certain product is in stock at a Macy's store near their home, or view the electronic catalog of a Macy's physical store. When you click on the button, you can immediately add your favorite products to your shopping list and then go to a physical store to purchase them. This means that MyMacy's integrates the products into a convenient search database so that customers can see the products available in stores near their location. The ultimate goal is We need to provide each online customer with a more localized and personalized retail experience, as well as the smartest retail experience, and build Macy’s into a customer-centric company.
User behavior can be analyzed through big data. Have you noticed anything in your life that uses big data?