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Summary

According to Aberdeen Group research gathered in October 2008, 37% of retailers are feeling enough consumer pressure to create customized assortments; by store, by store cluster, or by selling channel. Customers now expect a certain de facto level of personalization in many aspects of their lives. In fact, "matching higher customer-centricity by the competition" was the third highest pressure cited by retailers (following the perennial standard-bearers of gross margin and inventory turns).

Anxious to keep and cater to their existing client base, forward-thinking retailers are gathering, aggregating, and analyzing customer data, merchandise data, and selling channel data, in order to construct multi-attribute, affinity-based precision assortments. These assortments are constructed and tailored specifically for each group. This merchandising methodology has only recently become technically feasible, so one might suspect that Tier I retailers, with their larger budgets and staff, would have staked out for themselves a clear advantage over their smaller competitors. But as Aberdeen data shows, such is not the case.

© 2009 Aberdeen Group
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