If you’d like to learn more about customer data strategies and hear success stories from brands like Coach and Kate Spade New York that have utilized data for their retail success, read The Business of Fashion's full article: Leveraging Data to Drive Deeper Relationships with Customers.
GGP - Retailvisory - Make sense of the wide world of customer data
Make sense of the wide world of customer data
Partnering with The Business of Fashion, we explore how gathering and optimizing your customer data is key for your retail success
What if you could predict the shopping and spending habits of your business’s target audience? What if you could find out exactly what your customers want — even before they know? It would make running a business easier, be a surefire way for small businesses to save money, and probably help a lot of entrepreneurs get a good night’s sleep for once.
Well, in the age of data, you don’t need to be clairvoyant for this to be a reality. As a topic of a four-part collaboration between GGP's Retailvisory and The Business of Fashion, we’re looking at the impact customer data is having on the retail industry. By examining The Business of Fashion's very own case studies, sharing best practices for analyzing data, and providing the confidence to take on all those numbers, we aim to help businesses optimize their retail approach with concrete numbers they can trust.
The Business of Fashion: Leveraging Data to Drive Deeper Relationships with Consumers
Set the foundation
We live in a time when data is readily available and can help business owners make informed decisions. Brands that invest in data technology and hone their data strategy approaches are better positioned to stay ahead of the curve. For example, The Business of Fashion reports that Levi Strauss & Co. has partnered with Google Cloud to analyze data across product popularity and weather patterns, while Canadian retailer Aritzia bases its store scheduling decisions on footfall data to improve the shopper-to-associate ratio and sales productivity.
However, you don’t need to splurge on the latest data technology to see business growth. The first step is to determine what problems need solving. Maybe you want to gain consumer insights to develop a marketing plan or better understand your customers’ shopping habits to streamline inventory processes. From there, you can decide what data you need, where to obtain it, and how you can analyze it to enhance your business operations.
Put it to use
Now that you’ve located a problem you’d like to solve, let’s look at some of the information data can provide us.
Transaction data tells us what customers are buying and when they are buying it. And if you implement customer surveys at your store, you can even acquire data that tells you what emotions customers felt at the time of their purchase. All of this helps inform product decisions or how to best market your brand.
Data also allows you to track foot traffic and movement throughout a store. This informs staffing needs and store layout decisions. When you pair this data with shopper demographics and spending patterns, you can even decipher whether a new location is desired by customers and where optimal locations may be.
It's this marriage of hard data (customer transaction history and demographics) and data surrounding consumer emotions (customer surveys, interviews, and lifestyle patterns) that helps you gain a 360-degree view of their target audience’s values, preferences, and shopping habits. Having this insight is integral to understanding your customers at the deepest level and is proven to drive brand loyalty while informing decision-making.
Make the most of it
Now it’s time to figure how you’ll put the data into action. Discover ways you can analyze it to maximize benefits. And if the solutions aren’t immediately clear, don’t give up. It may take a while before patterns appear and the data begins to tell a story.
Better yet, find out ways you can make data readily available to other team members or departments in your business. You may be surprised by the unique perspectives different people have when looking at a particular data set.
True success is achieved once you integrate data learning across product development, merchandising, and marketing, as well as omnichannel retail strategies. But you can’t build that all in one day. Start small. Achieve your most pressing goals first and after some time, troubleshooting, and commitment, you’ll be a total numbers whiz.
Last updated: April 3, 2026
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