In the second season of the Vincit Talks vodcast, we’ll be discussing the fundamentals of digital business – online stores, web services, customer data, customer experience, and more.
In our first episode of season 2, we talked with professor and researcher Johanna Frösén from Aalto University. Johanna's research focuses on marketing effectiveness measurement and metrics. She’s also written a book about strategic marketing and is involved in conducting marketing status survey research.
We wanted to discuss the state of Finnish customer data, analytics, and customer experience expertise. Is Finland in the top tier of online stores and digital services? And what kind of challenges are there?
Where Finnish eCommerce stands now
The high-level answer is that Finnish companies have all the pieces in place to catch up to digital commerce leaders in other countries. The data to build customized journeys and create a better experience exists, it just needs to be fully utilized.
So what does a leading online shopping experience look like? Typically, the customer is recognized when they come to the store, for example if they’ve entered by an email link. The store can typically see what kind of products the customer has previously ordered and which brands they’re interested in to build a customized purchase path.
In the leading stores, once a customer has entered their personal information it’s usually stored to make sure transactions are faster and easier. Customer data is also used for demand forecasting and inventory management so that delivery times can be quicker.
What’s needed to move forward
For Finnish retailers, there’s no shortage of data. Instead, the challenge is to use this data well. To do this requires expertise in data analytics, marketing, sales, and e-commerce. All of these skills exist in Finland – they just need to be brought together, which requires time and investment.
Using vast amounts of available customer data to do more forward-looking predictive analytics and related scenario building is going to be key. AI will also play a role. With the help of AI, tools that previously required more expertise from the market will become available.
AI will greatly expand the types of data that companies can use in marketing decision-making, for example vast amounts of textual data, images, or different types of non-numerical data.
