Specialty Retail Hits the Mark

What makes a successful retailer? To answer that question, Manhattan Associates, in partnership with Google Cloud and Zebra Technologies, examined data insight from real purchases, returns, and customer journeys across digital and physical channels to create The Unified Commerce Benchmark for Specialty Retail, a report conducted by Incisiv.

The benchmark assesses retailers across 11 specialty retail segments on the implementation of 286 key attributes of unified commerce.

Of the 124 retailers benchmarked, 15 emerged as leaders: Academy Sports + Outdoors, American Eagle Outfitters, Belk, Crate & Barrel, Levi’s, Macy’s, MAC Cosmetics, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Pandora, REI Co-op, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, UGG, and Zales.

The benchmark identifies common challenges in retailers’ efforts to adopt these new business models, which include advanced analytics that create a single view of the business. The data shows that there is still work to be done.

1. Personalization: Identifying shopper intent is the first step to providing a personalized experience; however, just 38% of the retailers studied give their store associates access to shopper purchase history and wish lists across all channels.

2. Real-time inventory visibility: Only 29% of the retailers studied provide real-time inventory statistics on their product detail pages.

3. Convenience and flexibility: Retailers should provide multiple payment and delivery options and the ability to change orders after the sale. Just 15% of the retailers studied offer customers the option to change a fulfillment method post-order, and just 27% provide the ability to return store purchases online.