Crowdsourcing for retailers: the 4 issues the Crowd can solve

May 2019

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Crowdsourcing has proven to be the most efficient way to collect real-time data directly from stores.

Over the past years manufacturers active in different fields, have started making use of on-demand individuals to get accurate information, in order to take data-driven business decisions.

The immediacy provided by crowdsourcing is not only useful to producers though, as retailers have just as much to gain when it comes to capturing real-time feedback on what’s really happening in-store.

Here are the 4 pain-points Crowdsourcing can help retailers with:

1. Availability

Out-of-stock situations inevitably bring losses in terms of both sales and of customer satisfaction. Checking if products are available to shoppers, especially during peak-hours and weekends, can represent a tough challenge for any retailer.

Here’s where a Crowd of shoppers comes into play, delivering accurate and real-time insights on OSA and OOS and allowing retailers to take immediate action to improve distribution.

2. Compliance

The retail landscape is getting more complex and competitive by the hour. With shoppers being more demanding, e-commerce severely battling with brick-and-mortar stores, and finally, manufacturers being better equipped to measure in-store execution, compliance is crucial to deliver consistency and good service throughout stores.

Relying on a crowd of thousands of shoppers ready to take action anytime and anywhere, represents the solution to ensure planograms are perfectly executed

3. Service

Understanding the shopper path to purchase, as well as assessing the factors affecting success from a customer standpoint, is crucial to develop and implement programs aimed at increasing customer satisfaction.

Crowd-supported mystery shopping is the perfect solution for measuring and improving the customer experience.
Letting real shoppers test the preparation of store personnel and report on factors such as store cleanliness, presence of promotional materials and overall service quality, allows retailers to get an immediate overview on the performance of their network. By accessing location-based data shared in real-time through mobile technology, retail chains can immediately identify which stores are falling behind and implement targeted actions accordingly.

4. Competition

Understanding how competitors are moving in terms of prices and quality of service often represents a blind-spot for retailers. On the other hand, collecting intel on the competition can turn-up being a huge effort, especially when budgets are tight.

Crowdsourcing is a fast and cost-effective way to understand what competitors are doing in stores. The members of the Crowd see available “tasks” on their smartphones, according to their experience level and proximity to the requested POS. This makes possible cutting all costs related to transportation and offer rates up to 50% cheaper than the traditional field marketing agencies.