Dunnhumby Launches Tool to Assess and Address Competition
As competition stays tight across the omnichannel, new tools are helping retailers keep an eye on rival businesses and stay a step ahead of them. One example is a recently launched solution from dunnhumby, called the Competitive Threat Evaluator.
The web-based tool from the U.K.-based data science company allows retailers to gauge the intensity and nature of competition by combining geo-location data from Placer.ai with intelligence from dunnhumby’s Retailer Preference Index (RPI). That index uncovers consumer sentiments on price, promotions, assortment and in-store and online store experiences.
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Dunnhumby’s latest tool provides data on both short- and long-term competitors and drills down into which retailer’s stores are the most and least threatened by challenges. Users can get a dashboard view of competitors, access a ranking of each store in their chain and evaluate the landscape on a banner-by-banner basis via a threat map.
Ultimately, the insights allow grocers to focus on the most pertinent and urgent issues to address when developing banner, pricing and assortment strategies. Retailers can also use the information to make informed decisions about expansions, including new locations and store remodels.
“Grocery retailers often manage hundreds, if not thousands of stores, across diverse geographies and different competitive landscapes. Before today, there wasn’t a single dataset that provided a holistic understanding of both the intensity and nature of each competitor a retailer faced. But with dunnhumby’s Competitive Threat Evaluator, retailers have a single dataset that provides invaluable shopper insights and store preferences to make sure they stay on top of their competitive threats,” said Matt O’Grady, dunnhumby’s president of the Americas.
It’s been a busy month for dunnhumby. In early June, the company and its corporate venture capital arm, dunnhumby ventures, rolled out the Retail Innovation Network, a program for early-stage startups, enterprise partners and investors in retail and consumer goods tech sectors. The goal of the program is to encourage innovation through collaboration and co-development.
According to dunnhumby, membership in the network is free and assessed “on a rolling basis, with successful applicants receiving an opportunity to participate in invitation-only online and in-person events, access dunnhumby’s expert network, and gain other exclusive industry resources.”
