Every report we conduct at RSR starts with a wish list. “What do we want to know about.. ” and then the topic at hand. And invariably, what we want to know well exceeds what we’re able to publish before people start saying, “No, stop – it’s just too much data. ” We get it. We’ve all been asked to try and take in too much information in one sitting, and there’s a certain point where it ceases to be useful.

That said, there’s a lot we find out in our research that doesn’t make it into our published reports. Most of it goes to our clients – part of our continuous efforts to help them put their best foot forward. But every so often we use this newsletter as a platform to share never-before-seen data, like Figure 1 below.

And when it comes to one of the hottest topics going, location-intelligence tools, retailers’ interests are only growing.

2018 was the first time we ever conducted research on this topic. And as you can see, in just 12 months, literally every option we made available has become more important to retailers, from getting new customer attributes for CRM purposes to using geo-based data to model and forecast. Routing and delivery hold huge potential; so does targeted personalized marketing. That’s useful to know. But here’s something even more instructive: who’s finding the most value in each of these individual capabilities? (Figure 2)

As you can see from Figure 2, what a retailer sells has great effect on where their priorities lie. And while pretty much everyone agrees that location-based technologies are going to help them better reach and engage customers (something we also examine from retailers’ geography and revenue bands, as well), we start to see that location-based-tech is becoming General Merchandise and FMCG retailer’s game to lose.

These retailers have inordinate interest throughout, citing markedly higher value to such capabilities as indoor mapping, personalized marketing, as well as the ability to use location data to improve their forecasting and ultimately – grow market share. Quite simply, despite everyone’s increased interest from last year to this, Grocers and GM retailers are the ones driving innovation here.

We invite everyone to read the full report to learn more!