The digital age sets a challenging stage for specialty retail market players. As consumers increasingly turn to online shopping and webrooming, specialty retail market players must use the same technology to their advantage.
Today, most of the consumers are shopping on their mobile phones and tablets rather than laptops or desktops. As a result, specialty retail market players need to create responsive site designs to optimize the customer experience. Additionally, implementing in-store smartphone targeting to gather customer data and deliver targeted offers for an omnichannel experience is a must for specialty retail companies to stand a chance in today’s competitive retail market. Furthermore, the market is highly fragmented and competitive, with no single retailer capturing more than a few percents of the market. This gives buyers a wealth of choices and makes it tough for any retailer to stand out. As a result, specialty retail players must increase their focus on assortment, trendiness, quality, pricing, and customer experience to develop and enhance their brand equity. 
The global recession has also brought with it a host of challenges for specialty retail market players: rising labor costs and sluggish buying. It has also created a higher cost of goods sold and led to lower gross margins. As a result, sales of brick and mortar stores have struggled, although e-commerce continues to deliver strong growth.
Business Issues
- The client: A leading specialty retail market player
The client is an American specialty retail market player headquartered in Minnesota. The company – with an annual turnover of over 40 billion USD – approached Infiniti with a specific business problem, which was to enter the Asian market and target potential market segments effectively. The specialty retail client also wanted to personalize their marketing campaigns and target customers individually to enhance customer service and satisfaction.
Additionally, with the help of Infiniti’s market segmentation solution, the client wanted to be more efficient in allocating their resources. The primary objective of the client was to devise effective strategies to identify pathways to accelerate product development without comprising on the quality of their products.
How Can Market Segmentation Help Specialty Retail Market Players?
With the growing demands of customers across the globe, specialty retail industry players are facing challenges to maintain their foothold across markets. Market segmentation engagements help businesses profile the needs and desires of the customers and develop products accordingly. Market segmentation also helps firms overcome the factors impeding the growth and take advantage of the new prospects. Specialty retail market players can leverage Infiniti’s market segmentation solutions to reduce costs and target the ideal potential customers.
Summary of our market segmentation solution
Client Journey
The market segmentation experts at Infiniti followed a detailed qualitative and quantitative research approach and conducted surveys and interviews with leading stakeholders in the global specialty retail market to help the client identify the right demographics and position their product offerings effectively. To further help the retail company effectively allocate resources, the experts gathered information from a wide array of proprietary sources such as industry databases, paid company presentations, and forums.
Solution Benefits and the Business Impact
Infiniti’s market segmentation engagement helped the specialty retail market player to precisely forecast customer preferences and accordingly position their product offerings. This engagement also helped the client identify the needs and desires of the consumers and stay on par with the competition. This helped them increase brand equity and affinity. The client also implemented real-time marketing campaigns and identified the data inputs to be used to capture the Asian market. Furthermore, the specialty retail market client devised robust initiatives to drive better operational costs while maintaining the profitability of their business.
The Future
Like individuals, specialty retail companies are finding a new approach each new year by making resolutions to improve their performance. Among other things, these might include incremental improvements in supply chain efficiency, enhancements to customer experience, and omnichannel capabilities. Additionally, specialty retail market players are designing, curating, and brilliantly executing shopper experiences that simply cannot be had elsewhere. Also, robotics is being employed to cover for simple in-store operational tasks and free up human interaction to delight their customers.
A must-read case study for strategy specialists and decision makers looking to develop an understanding of the specialty retail market
