Understanding exactly what the customer likes and wants can give brands an advantage in a saturated retail market. First Insight, the data-driven merchandizing and product-testing platform, is now offering a suite of engagement tools to brands and retailers, to help them better connect with their customers and inform their product strategy.
The new customer experience platform iCX builds on First Insight’s existing product-testing solution. Through a combination of shopper insights and product-level analytics, the platform is designed to increase a brand’s speed-to-market and inform merchandizing assortment decisions.
“[With First Insight,] retailers and brands use voice-of-the-customer data and predictive analytics to improve their operations — from product design to buying to pricing,” said First Insight CEO Greg Petro. “The new platform incorporates some of the latest technologies, such as image recognition and survey branching, allowing our retail partners to derive even more value.”
Consumers have grown more discerning and demanding in their retail experiences, and the iCX platform intends to address those needs. The digital testing process has been redesigned to carry the look and feel of the brand or retailer and now includes interactive elements, such as 3-D virtual prototypes. It eliminates the need to produce physical samples for customer testing, which can reduce costs.
“At Crocs, we are eager to start using this new customer experience platform to dig deeper into the ‘why’ behind customer behavior — why customers like (or don’t like) a product, or why they will pay more,” said Michael Pao, VP, product management at Crocs. “This qualitative data is just as important as the quantitative data and will help Crocs create truly customer-driven assortments.”
The new image recognition function expands on First Insight’s emphasis on the visual experience, for both consumers and users. Through image recognition, companies can track images from initial tests to market launches, which efficiently scales the solution across their product inventory.
Additional features include survey branching, which can help companies more accurately segment their customers; a personalized rewards system, which can boost customer engagement; as well as cannibalization and incremental analysis, which considers the crossover effects of the tested items. As a result, it can suggest optimized product assortments for retailers.
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