This white paper addresses how prioritizing a fit strategy using AI solutions can help apparel businesses increase conversion and boost average order value (AOV) during the holidays, and reduce costly returns in the months after.

Highlights:

How Apparel Businesses Can Use AI to Prepare for the Holiday Rush

Choosing the Best Fit Solution

4 Ways to Leverage Fit Data To Increase Profits and Decrease Returns During the Holidays — and Beyond

If you were to sit and watch a video of your customers browsing your store, you would undoubtedly see a mix of those who know exactly what they want and can intuitively find it, combined with a sea of shoppers baffled by the array of products offered.

Shopping is meant to be a comfortable and seamless process. However, with the rise of large retail centers, intuitive facility use has been largely left by the wayside. The good news is that plenty of solutions are at hand to improve the shopping experience. Instead of relying solely on asking for assistance, these tools can enhance in-store navigation and make the shopping experience more interactive and informative. Let’s dive into what these tools are.

For the fourth edition of our State of the CDP report, we surveyed over 1200 professionals around the world. The responses have revealed that Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) have proven critical to organizational growth during demanding times, especially as we see a global tightening of the collective purse strings.

The data shows that  CDPs are helping companies navigate economic or industry challenges, recession-proofing the organization and unlocking new opportunities by breaking down internal silos and streamlining customer communications.

Compared to other industries, retailers are late to the digital transformation agenda. Yet they cannot take a time-out to perform a wall-to-wall redesign of their operations on either the selling side or the supply side of their businesses. So where should they start? Which business processes are the best candidates for digital transformation strategies?

These are the questions that the RSR team sought to answer in this study. Some of the highlights of what we found:

After more than two years of pandemic chaos, retail brands don’t have reliable data to build accurate forecasts. Planners are trying their best, but without steady performance metrics it’s anyone’s guess what next year will hold. Procurement has seen recent plans go sideways so often that they don’t trust anything anymore.  

Small misjudgments in forecasting can become huge cost centers by the time those numbers hit procurement, and those numbers multiply with each surprise delay or increased cost. Unprecedented world events have muddled the planning and sourcing cycle even more.

The way we shop is evolving, both online and in the real world, enabling new opportunities to engage with consumers and influence their decisions. We look at how big tech is developing new tools, investing in startups, and using partnerships to expand its reach across the customer journey.

Competition for consumers’ attention has intensified, particularly online, where the average consumer spends more than 13 hours a day. The concept of “online shopping” is also expanding to new platforms. At the same time, retailers of all sizes are on the hunt for tech that will help them digitize operations across stores and online. 

10 years ago the cost of selling internationally was so high that it constituted an enormous risk to businesses that many were simply not prepared to take.  Cross border trading is more important than ever. With growing competition and restricted domestic opportunities, the real risk to merchants is choosing not to sell internationally. Today it’s 10x faster and 10x cheaper to go international, to the extent that now the real risk is NOT going international.

Today’s best retail therapy is a five-star customer experience. New technology has sparked a “reset” for retailers and shoppers. With it, retailers can offer a tailored experience instead of one that feels “off-the-rack.” Go all-in on service, delight customers, and lock up repeat sales.

This e-book shows how new tech uplevels the shopping experience and how new applications can support your core strategies.