Winning With Hyper-Local Retailing - AccuStore

Hyper-local retailing is one big advantage that brick-and-mortar stores still have over ecommerce. It gives you the ability to provide the best experience to customers by tailoring a store to your community’s specific needs. Think of it as another “P” to add to the infamous “Four P’s of Retail” (product, price, promotion and placement). That all-important fifth P is proximity – matching the right location to the consumer for immediate gratification. Hyper-local retailing can encompass everything from tailoring the store layout, visual merchandising, marketing and product mix to using beacon technology to push personalized offers to customers’ smartphones in a particular store. The benefits can be considerable.

Hyper-local retailing improves the customer experience and generates higher ROI by deepening the connection and encouraging customer loyalty. Something else worth mentioning: Google reports that the number of searches with the words “near me,” “nearby” or “closest” has doubled in the past year. Just more proof that consumers are looking for local businesses to support.

One retailer who embraces this concept is customer favorite, Lululemon. The successful athleisure brand is opening a hyper-local New York store/lab in March. It will feature limited-edition accessories and apparel – about 50 pieces per style – made just for that location. The retailer’s head designer will be creating and sewing samples on the spot, in an area behind the fitting rooms. Lululemon is encouraging him to interact with customers and the local creative community in order to reflect their lifestyle in his designs.

It’s not difficult to start incorporating hyper-local retailing methods in your business strategy. To help, we’ve made a list of some ideas to try, which have already proved successful. (Target makes an excellent case study in this regard.)

1. Use visual merchandising to tell your local story. The store design (as well as the merchandise assortment) at Target’s Alaska store caters specifically to the outdoor enthusiast.

2. Respect local culture. Before Target opened a store in Hawaii, it honored the cultural tradition of taking part in a native Hawaiian ceremony to bless the land first.
3. Consider lifestyles as well as demographics when building a merchandising strategy. Because TargetExpress is located in downtown business districts, the product mix is geared to the business traveler’s needs. For example, The One Spot, which is usually a dollar deal bin, was stocked with office supplies. For more insight, see this homage from Popsugar.
4. Tailor your advertising, store by store. A one-size-fits-all strategy will not work with hyper-local thinking. AccuStore can help you ensure the right POP signage and store-specific coupons always gets to the right store on time.
5. Give consumers a reason to visit – and stay. What’s something that must be experienced firsthand? Sometimes the display and the environment are what convince you that you really need that product, even if it’s a cup of coffee.

How AccuStore Can Help

A professional survey provides you with accurate insight into every location’s unique attributes and helps you increase efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience by tailoring your advertising by store. Plus, AccuStore’s mobile data capture technology and site profile management software keeps your data current and up to date.

Check out the ultimate guide to surveys to learn everything you need to know.