2017 has already been a year when we’re eating a lot of our own dogfood. We keep telling retailers they need to modernize their offerings to consumers, and we’re making sure we modernize ours, too. So for example, instead of just offering our free content via dense, text-based reports, we’re releasing our findings via 90 second videos. We’re also making an eBook available for every report we do going forward, and we’re sharing “snack-sized ” tidbits of data across myriad social media platforms, all for one reason: to make it easier for you and your colleagues to access our findings in a way that fits better into your schedule.

With that in mind, check out something else new that we’re doing. For every benchmark report we’re conducting in 2017, we’re also surveying consumers on the same topic. What are we asking them? The exact same questions we’re asking retailers. Sometimes we’ll have to change the wording a bit to remove any industry terms that consumers don’t use the way retailers do, but the concept is straightforward: are there gaps between what retailers believe and what consumers say is reality?

Internally, we’re referring to the project as the “he said/she said ” data, and one look at our first data set and you’ll start to see why.

Take a look at just one of the questions about The Store (the first topic we’re tackling), and see for yourself. We asked consumers how often they visit store today vs. just 3 years ago. This is what they had to say. In short, not much has changed yet, but you can see the writing on the wall.

Then, in our yet-to-be-released Store Report, we asked retailers to rate how they agree with certain sentiments about the store. As you can see, the majority know what the problem is, and moreover: a great deal don’t think they’re currently prepared to deal with it effectively.

In net: this is how a perfect storm is created.

If you find this kind of data interesting, please let us know. We know that we want to share a lot more of it, but we’re still kicking around ideas for a) what the best format for it should be and b) how much detail we need to frame around the data, itself. In other words, does it need a lot of explanation for what this means for retail, or does it speak better for itself and allow readers to draw their own conclusions? We’d love to know your thoughts.

And may the remainder of 2017 continue to be a year of consumer-driven focus for us all.