Predicting Consumer Behavior to Make Retail Smarter

Retail has always been a gamble. What if it didn’t have to be a risk? Retailers are eager to understand consumer behavior and desires before committing to inventory. As expectations for environmentally conscious business practices, retailers are steering away from waste.

First Insight helps businesses reach sustainability goals and accurately forecast consumer behavior. How exactly? With product testing in the early design stages, First Insight helps retailers refine inventory.

On this episode of “What Just Happened?”, hosted by Christine Russo, Greg Petro, CEO of First Insight, discusses the revolutionary consultations provided by the company. Petro breaks down the complex layers between retail, wholesaler, and manufacturer, where the product development process is disjointed, and biases are implemented.

Russo and Petro discuss…

●Test in design, from sketches to CAD, and samples to obtain the information.

●The First Insight process, on both the B2B and B2C side.

●The gaps between design, manufacturing, and selling -all with separate views of what the customer wants.

“Ultimately, the consumer is going to decide whether we were right,” said Petro. The First Insight process obtains the customer’s opinion from design, providing them with what they want so that their dollars go further in the retail setting.

Greg Petro received his undergrad and master’s degrees from the University of Pittsburg. He started working with First Insight in 2007 and serves on the board for FIT.

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

NFL Linebacker
Former NFL Linebacker Thomas R. Williams Talks about Life after Football
February 4, 2026

On this episode of the Through the Storm podcast with Dr. Travis Hearne, Travis sits down with former NFL linebacker, leadership expert, author, and all-around amazing human, Thomas R. Williams.  Since 2018, Thomas R. Williams has been a proud member of The Jon Gordon Speaking Team, dedicated to developing positive leaders and fostering stronger,…

Read More
Energy
Buy, Build & AI: Your New Software Strategy for Energy Leaders
February 3, 2026

Energy companies are running into a hard truth: the old “buy vs. build” debate no longer fits today’s reality—especially as AI moves from experiment to expectation. A modern software strategy must now account for cloud-native, modular ecosystems, where open APIs, integrations, and AI-ready interfaces determine how quickly teams can launch, adapt, and scale. Early…

Read More
filmmaking
Lights, Camera, Authenticity: Why Trusting Your Voice Is the Most Radical Move in Filmmaking Today
February 3, 2026

The entertainment industry is at a crossroads, where questions of access, authorship, and technological disruption are reshaping who gets to tell stories—and how those stories get made. From the rise of AI-assisted tools to ongoing conversations about representation and gatekeeping, filmmaking today is as much about identity and equity as it is about craft….

Read More
AI in energy
May the Agentforce Be With You: AI in Energy Services
February 3, 2026

Generative AI has moved past being a shiny demo and into the messy reality of enterprise operations—where data lives in different systems, customers expect instant answers, and security teams (rightfully) say “prove it.” In energy services specifically, even small efficiency gains matter: many retail energy providers operate on thin margins, and operational blind spots—billing…

Read More