Retail Council of Canada (RCC) is bolstering its retail data capabilities by teaming up with marketing and analytical services company Environics Analytics.

This summer, RCC unveiled a customizable dashboard developed with KPMG. The goal was to help retailers access better data by collecting and consolidating it from various sources, including Statistics Canada and Moneris Data Services.

Now, Environics Analytics is among those data sets, allowing marketers to find critical information across multiple retail sectors, regions and timeframes. 

The new Environics Analytics information will provide Canadian data on buyer visits to physical stores, websites and apps, as well as comprehensive demographics by region and retail vertical. That’s on top of existing real-time data on retail sales, the economy, retail job numbers, consumer spending and pandemic metrics.

“RCC’s recent member survey showed retailers believe that quickly accessing relevant data and improving the quality of that data should be a top priority for their business, especially now when everything can change so quickly,” says Diane J. Brisebois, president and CEO, Retail Council of Canada.

More specifically, the Environics analytics products have been added to the RCC dashboard include FootFall, ClickScapes and DemoStats.

FootFall provides information on actual consumers that physically visit retail stores. It allows retailers to identify which locations, including competitor stores, have the most or least visits and how these are trending over time, category and season, as well as how they line up with things like marketing efforts or new neighbouring businesses.

ClickScapes provides a view of the digital behaviour of Canadians by capturing visits to thousands of mobile apps and websites. From this information, retailers can better understand the profiles of the visitors to their websites and those of their competitors, as well as trends in digital for their environments by region, and by retail vertical.

And finally, DemoStats is a comprehensive demographic database for current year, as well as projections for three, five and ten years. While based on Statistics Canada information, the database provides information on significantly more variables than is customarily accessible, and according to RCC,  is an essential tool for retail marketers to understand consumer demand, trends, gain a 360-degree view of their markets, and strategize for future growth.