The PAYTECH Book

Exploiting the Value of Data Embedded in Payments Systems

By Suramya Gupta

Fund Manager, SBI Holdings – Japan

Capturing Insights About Offline Customers is Hard

We live in a world where online behaviour of consumers is tracked and analysed to an increasingly intrusive extent. The ongoing debate in the USA regarding the role that online platforms like Facebook might have played in the previous American elections is a clear indication of the growing ability to track online customer behaviour (and increasingly guide it).

However, despite the rapid growth of online retailers, the majority of global retail purchases continue to be offline. And in the offline space, brands have always struggled to figure out which customers are buying their goods, which are not – and what incremental steps could help drive the second set of customers into the first set.

Profiling and Organizing Offline Shoppers

With the level of fragmentation in physical retail and the vast number of retail brands, there is no easy way to profile and organize access to offline shoppers. This has led to the growth of a global advertising industry which struggles to measure the real impact of promotions. There is no easy way to measure the impact of targeted promotions on offline shoppers, and the direct purchase value delivered.

In the online space, this question is addressed by Google and Facebook, both of whom have attracted customers by enrolling them through information (Google Search & Maps) and social interactions ...