Aimia, a global leader in loyalty management, has partnered with Michigan-based Spartan Stores to leverage and further develop Spartan’s customer-centric approach to retail by harnessing data collected from the grocery distributor’s ‘yes Rewards’ cardholders.
Through the Aimia Self-Serve platform, Spartan will provide customers with a more relevant and personalized shopping experience across its network of stores. Spartan’s learning in this area can also be leveraged by its broad wholesale customer base, allowing merchandising best practices to be shared across that group.
What’s more, Spartan plans to work with its wide supplier base -- using these detailed insights into customer purchasing habits and behavior to improve ROI and build a stronger, more committed partner network.
David Buckingham, U.S. President of Aimia’s Intelligent Shopper Solutions (ISS) team, told Loyalty 360 that Aimia and Spartan Stores share a mutual understanding of the power of customer-centric retailing and can help Spartan by harnessing customer insights and by placing the customer at the center of everything.
“We use very detailed data to drive targeted communications and campaigns across a variety of media channels,” Buckingham said. “Spartan has its own loyalty rewards program it realized there was incremental value it could unlock from that program from working with an expert in that field.”
With its Self-Serve platform, Aimia can house Spartan loyalty data.
“We can take data from 1 million-plus members, load that into the database and make that available to marketing teams at Spartan Stores and various departments within Spartan Stores,” Buckingham said. “It takes granular detail that we capture on every single customer, store, transaction, and every shopping basket. We take that and put it into a Big Data warehouse and through an interface it delivers insight around key business modules such as assortment, promotions, and pricing that will be implemented across the Spartan organization. Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is create a better shopping experience.”
Buckingham said Aimia’s goal is to show Spartan what’s happening in its stores to shape a “much better personal experience” through relevant offers and incentives so the company isn’t filling inboxes with a “load of junk email.”
Much customer data, Buckingham said, sits in a warehouse until a team of analysts runs a high-level query.
“A high-level query takes a lot of effort and quite a long time to return the answer,” Buckingham said. “We’re experts at unlocking the power of that data very quickly. For some organizations in this space, a query takes four to five hours of run time. Our average run time is less than two minutes. Everyone has loads of data. In its crude form, it’s not that useful.”
Larry Pierce, Vice President of Center Store Merchandising at Spartan Stores, said in a press release: “We have an engaged customer base and are determined to provide them with the best possible shopping experience. We’re confident that our in-depth relationship with Aimia will help make that possible.”
Pierce added that Aimia has a first-rate track record in data analytics and has transformed businesses across the globe with its approach to consumer insight and targeted communications.
“We’re truly excited about working with them to develop improved data capabilities and to help us better understand how our customers think,” Pierce said.
Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Spartan Stores is the nation’s ninth largest grocery distributor with 1.4 million square feet of warehouse, distribution, and office space. The company distributes more than 40,000 private and national brand products to about 390 independent grocery locations in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, and to the company’s 101 corporate-owned stores located in Michigan, including Family Fare Supermarkets, Glen’s Markets, D&W Fresh Markets, VG’s Food and Pharmacy, and Valu Land.