Predictive Analytics make predictions about the future events based on current data. These days retailers use it to determine the future needs of the customers. The biggest challenge faced by retailers today is customer retention. Predictive Analytics is bringing about a huge change in the retail experience altogether. Eminent retailers like Amazon is using predictive analytics to make customer recommendations based on purchasing history. Furthermore, development in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning is boosting its use. These developments in turn are helping the retailers gain a competitive edge. However tech giants like Google, Microsoft tend to keep the cutting-edge innovations for them. The new and innovative predictive analytics must level the playing field for small medium industries. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/retail-reaping-rewards-predictive-analysis

Nowadays, retailers are suffering data breaches. According to a research, it was found 33% of retailers say they have experienced a breach where intruders stole or gained access to personally identifiable information. Another research found that 87% majority of respondents said their breach detection systems are either well-integrated (39%) or partially integrated (48%). In 2014, only 75% said these systems are well-integrated (33%) or partially integrated (42%). Read more at: http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/study-retailers-gaining-cybersecurity-confidence#

One of the marketing questions is: "Is there a pattern to how best customers are acquired, and if so, how to repeat it?" If customers' interactions are tracked prior to their first purchase, and track which ones remain good customers and which ones we never see again, then we much more informed decisions can be made about spending precious customer acquisition marketing budget. Three things we should consider are:  Firstly whether you're an online-only or a multi-channel retailer, think about how to collect pre-purchase activity data, even if the data is anonymous. Secondly, think about how you can correlate this data with your customer purchase history. Thirdly, look for repeatable acquisition patterns among your customers, and don't forget to look at timing patterns as well as the usual sources and marketing types. Read more at: 

Will this be the year in which retailers add SMS texting to their customer support channels? Plenty of consumers have discarded SMS in favor of WhatsApp. Thirty one percent of mobile phone owners prefer to text rather than talk. Texting bypasses the annoyance of wading through multiple menus and directives to enter account numbers or other personal information to route a call.

 To gather more information, follow the article link by Lydia Dishman, veteran business journalist.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lydiadishman/2014/05/02/is-texting-the-next-solution-for-retailers-to-field-customer-complaints/