How to Prevent Your Retail Segment from Becoming the Next “Bookstore”

As is the case in many other industries, independent wine and spirit retailers in a post-COVID world are seeing a drop in sales and revenue. The reason? The shifting demands of online shoppers has reduced their desire to discover new brands.

Mike Provance, the CEO of 3×3, works to change that. 3×3 is a marketing technology company dedicated to helping independent liquor retailers engage with and market to consumers. He joins Melissa Gonzalez to discuss how 3×3 leverages data to develop hyper-targeted, hyper-local marketing strategies for these independent retailers.

By drawing on their own proprietary data drawn from over 1,500 stores, information on demographics from a third-party source, as well as each store’s own demographic and profile attributes, 3×3 creates a powerful modeling tool to help clients zero in on their target audience.

One surprising trend Provance has noted in the post-COVID consumer’s online shopping habits is that they tend to have larger baskets, but go longer between purchases.

This shift hurts independent retailers the most, because the majority of these purchases tend to be from big household brands that are more easily found online. So although the total amount people are spending online isn’t changing, factors like replenishment cycles and inventory mix are.

Provance also noticed that customers shopping online prioritize speed and convenience — shoppers will often make alcohol purchases from the first page of a store’s online catalog, focusing on familiar names instead of trying something new. He adds that alcohol retailers haven’t built the right infrastructure to support online discovery, and that’s costing them dearly right now.

In the future, the 3×3 CEO expects brands to curate a personalized digital shopping experience for their consumers. Smaller and mid-market brands must start thinking about how they can stand out online in that regard.

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