Dozens of Canadian retailers are focused on boosting their in-store strategies and digital innovation, but who’s bringing it all together best?
To find out, strategy is introducing the Retail Innovator of the Year award.
Open to retailers in all categories, the award will be presented to the retail organization that has made the biggest strides in improving its omnichannel capabilities, based on insights gained from consumer and shopper research over the past calendar year.
The winning retailer will be selected by the 2017 Shopper Innovation Awards jury and the inaugural award will be presented at that awards show in spring 2017. Jury members who are part of a retail organization that has entered will be excluded from judging that particular entry.
The winner will be the retailer that has best leveraged consumer and shopper insights to improve upon its total offering, based on the criteria below.
The deadline for submissions is Friday, Nov. 18, with the deadline for all other Shopper Innovation Awards categories this Friday, Nov. 4.
Retail Innovator of the Year:
Where possible, provide specific detail about insights gained and how those were leveraged for innovation within your organization. In addition, please be as specific as possible about business results.
In-store experience (25%): Over the past calendar year, what steps have you taken to improve your in-store experience based on insights gleaned about your customer/potential customers (this could include merchandising, events and in-store tech innovation)? What results have you seen from this?
E-commerce programs (25%): Over the past calendar year, what initiatives have you undertaken to improve your e-commerce offering? What results have you seen from this?
Digital and CRM programs (30%): Over the past calendar year, what steps have you taken to improve your digital/CRM experience based on insights into your customer base? What results have you seen from this?
Marketing communications (15%): Over the past calendar year, what has your organization done in terms of marketing communications to boost awareness of what’s new among your customer base/target? What results have you seen from this?
Internal innovation (5%): Over the past calendar year, what has your organization done internally to facilitate overall innovation? This could include hiring more staff within a specific department, changing workflows within the office or creating more collaborative environments. What results have you seen from this?
All entries for Retail Innovator of the Year, segmented into the above criteria, must be submitted in Word format by Friday, November 18 to Harmeet Singh, news editor, strategy at hsingh@brunico.com.
