• Small profitability margins – A standing reality of the retail environment that is even more striking during planning for promotional programs
• High attrition rates – Customers can leave as easy as they come, looking for small differentiations; a better price, a more convenient location, better service or better rewards
• Hundreds of thousands of products, with different profitability and turnover ratios
• Multiple forms of competition – Threats from directly competing chains on a national level or small, specialized neighborhood stores with innovative and highly flexible promotional techniques
• Economies of scale – a mounting cry to allocate management overheads across more outlets. As a result, the research for uniformity and consolidation in marketing and technology is the new rule of thumb
• Vast volumes versus low value of transactions – Huge volumes are no excuse for overlooking the difference in profitability between customers and transactions. The small value makes this differentiation an even trickier venture, running the risk of indiscriminately overspending promotional resources. Technology is now the ultimate tool for efficiency and automatically picking and handling different customers, differently.

• Centrally controlled, for maintaining a consistent image and profitability
• Flexible, for quickly responding to unpredictable competitive actions and for maintaining profitability by concentrating tactical promotions only at the locations and on the products being challenged
• Integrated, across all locations and all customer touch-points, regardless of the underlying technologies used in the stores
• Effective and efficient, recognizing the unique opportunity of a customer’s first visit as a great chance to open a relationship without having to deal with complex processes or waiting in long lines
• Intelligent, thus cost-efficient, by making use of the customer’s detailed transaction behavior to target promotions, thus optimizing the organization’s entire promotional spending
• All encompassing by designing employee and partner educational programs and incentives to communicate the benefits of great initiatives, infuse enthusiasm and secure the engagement of all important contributors.

Our strategy for the Retail industry is supported by services and technology.

Merit Retail, a Merit Loyalty Suite® Industry Extension, helps our retail clients implement profitable programs with all of the above characteristics.