Green Hills’ Tech Lab Pursues Customer Profitability Metric

The Center for Advancing Retail & Technology (CART), a live, in-store technology lab hosted by community-based independent Green Hills, has formed a new partnership with New York-based 1010data, a provider of data warehouse and business intelligence products and services, to expand its capabilities for retail understanding and analysis.

According to Green Hills, 1010data's architecture supports near instantaneous ad-hoc queries against massive volumes of transaction data, enabling retailers to get detailed views of shopper profitability based on actual behavior, rather than averages. CART will be demonstrating the potential of this system at its research facility, and publishing the results through partner universities and media.

"Just as the data gathered through early loyalty programs brought to light massive differences in customer shopping behavior measured by sales (purchasing), shopping frequency, and retention over time, 1010data will enable the measurement of accurate shopper profitability built from item level up," said Gary Hawkins, CEO of Green Hills and Hawkins Strategic, the retail technology consulting arm of CART.

One of the near term goals at CART is to clearly understand not only package, brand, and category profitability, but also to develop accurate customer profitability in a mass retail operation. Leveraging 1010data's analytics platform, CART will be able to develop a true customer profitability metric, allowing retailers to understand margin at the individual level, according to Hawkins.

"From a retailer's perspective, when you have PCK (profound customer knowledge) you can never lose,” said Jim Mattecheck, VP, Retail Solutions Group, 1010data. “That's what our relationship with CART is all about, bringing PCK to life in a true retail environment."

Green Hills is a community-based independent in Syracuse N.Y. that is also host to the Center for Advanced Retail Technology, a retail technology lab in a live store setting.