Brands Gear Up for Election and Holiday Retail Swings With Predictive Analytics
As if the holiday season — from Halloween through December — isn’t challenging enough for brands and retailers, this fall the industry must brace for potential changes in consumer spending caused by the presidential election. The good news is that with predictive modeling consumer brands can anticipate what’s going to happen right now.
AI and ML solutions look forward, that’s just what they do, reviewing not only historical data but ingesting macroeconomic insights, social listening sentiments, retailer sales data, competing brand data, shopper loyalty information, and anything else analysts want to include. AI uniquely aids consumer brands with better commercial planning and forecasting around election sentiment and drives efficient holiday strategies by optimizing the supply chain and predicting demand to come.
As consumer sentiment sways between the election and holiday season, CPGs can stay ahead of the curve by preparing now for potential market fluctuations. Whether it’s an election-driven downturn or a festive shopping surge, AI offers invaluable support by providing real-time insights into evolving trends. By leveraging advanced analytics and forecasting tools, brands can confidently navigate the unpredictable months ahead and optimize their holiday strategies to meet consumer demand head-on. Let’s explore how AI can empower consumer brands to thrive during these pivotal moments.
1. Forecasting presidential election impact on brands
The retail industry has a history of worrying about elections more than it needs to. While one university study finds the election doesn’t impact consumer spending, another pundit says the election can boost spending.
While it’s necessary to take in survey information and the advice of thought leaders, AI can provide unbiased, data-driven insights. Consumer brands can use advanced analytics to forecast the performance of every brand in their portfolio, category trends, retailer sales numbers, volume swings, and whether consumers will trade down to specific competing brands.
AI applications deliver a range of scenarios on consumer confidence, discretionary spend, interest rates, and macroeconomic trends to accurately articulate how brands will perform and erase the “unpredictable” nature of an election outcome.
2. Optimizing the supply chain to master holiday inventory
Getting a handle on inventory during the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping can be too much for humans to handle. Rather than tackling inventory swings as they happen, consumer brand analysts can have AI anticipate availability, so brands produce and distribute products to the right stores.
This includes tightening an online sales strategy to avoid cannibalized sales, managing inventory for stores that are used for online fulfillment, and ensuring prices and promotions are effective across channels. And just as managing products can be difficult during the holidays, labor shortages typically challenge brands and retailers. AI modeling can forecast how labor and direct-store-delivery might impact brand performance.
With AI, brands can develop a full holiday picture, preparing brands with an outlook on how products expect to move, where, and with what support on hand.
3. Uncovering incrementality of holiday innovations
Brands unveil unique products during the holidays, such as fun-sized candy packages for Halloween or holiday bundles for gift-giving.
Rather than relying on the hope that innovative new items will land with consumers, brands can test creations inside AI models to see what incremental sales will occur and where there will be a demand transfer around the new products. Brands can avoid cannibalization by new innovations and see how predicted category assortments will perform with innovative items in place.
AI-powered insights and forecasts work to inform brands on what innovative products will be the most effective for the upcoming holidays, what products to retire, and where to place the items to get the most gain.
4. Managing marketing spend across channels for busy seasons
Research from eMarketer suggests total retail sales in the U.S., online and in-store, will increase nearly 5% this year compared to last year’s sales during November and December. The total dollar amount is expected to surpass $1.3 trillion, according to the research.
Using advanced analytics for attribution helps consumer brands develop an accurate marketing spend along with effective ad types across channels to earn a piece of the holiday sales growth.
Through these insights, brands know what’s incremental and can better optimize assortments, pricing strategies, and promotions to capitalize on high-traffic periods like the holidays and adjust accordingly to meet election-year dynamics.
Working with strategic retailer partners
Retailers rely on consumer brands to bring expert-level insights into how their products will perform during key seasons — be it mastering the holidays or navigating a presidential election. No matter the event or season ahead, predictive analytics help brands perform their best.
CPGs that use AI based insights to highlight which assortments and innovative products will sell best at which stores will earn a retailer’s trust long beyond the holiday season.
Become a category leader by delivering predictive insights to retailer partners and winning the final months of 2024. Contact Insite AI to learn how your brand can master the trends.
Predicting Consumer Trends: How AI Forecasts Shopping Behaviors
From chatbots to inventory management, the use of AI in retail continues to grow, but how can brands use AI to understand the desires of shoppers? In a recent guest post with Consumer Goods Technology, Gopal Tadiparthi, Head of ML/AI at Insite AI discusses how AI-driven insights can uncover what consumers want today and what they will be buying tomorrow.
CPGs (Consumer Packaged Goods companies) have access to extensive shopper data from their own sources, third-party panels, macroeconomic reports, social listening insights, and retailer purchasing and loyalty data. AI can analyze this wealth of information to deliver strategic findings on shopper behavior. By leveraging AI, brands can enhance customer segmentation, forecast future shopping behaviors, personalize shopping experiences, conduct sentiment analysis, predict customer churn, and map customer journeys. These capabilities allow brands to optimize their marketing, sales strategies, and product assortments, ultimately leading to improved performance and stronger collaborations with retailer partners.
Key Points:
AI and platforms like Walmart Luminate are revolutionizing shopper research by providing deep insights into consumer behaviors.
Brands can uncover data on BOPIS usage, brand-switching, pricing, and promotions to predict future shopping trends.
CPGs have access to extensive data sources, which AI can analyze to deliver strategic findings on shopper behavior.
AI helps brands enhance customer segmentation, personalize shopping experiences, and conduct sentiment analysis.
Leveraging AI in shopper research allows brands to optimize marketing strategies, improve product performance, and strengthen retailer collaborations.
AI Washing: Top 5 Questions To Separate Substance From Hype
Interestingly, the AI washers tend not to be small technology companies but rather larger consultancies
A concerning trend is emerging: Some large companies are engaging in “AI washing” – promoting themselves as having powerful AI capabilities when they actually have little to no real AI software or knowhow.
As this Forbes Tech Council article, Insite AI CEO Shaveer Mirpuri explains, AI washing is deceptive marketing akin to greenwashing. Companies capitalize on the AI buzz and hype to mislead customers into thinking they offer “AI-powered” services, when in reality they are using openly available tools like ChatGPT or have minimal AI intellectual property.
The article outlines 5 key questions companies should ask potential AI software partners to avoid getting AI washed:
Can they demo a real working AI solution?
How does their solution work without AI capabilities?
Can their AI be integrated into your internal cloud?
Who trains and monitors the AI’s performance?
Can the platform explain the reasoning behind its outputs?
With so much investment pouring into AI applications, companies must be diligent to separate the AI hype from actual robust AI solutions. Doing your due diligence is critical to avoid missed outcomes and wasted resources on overhyped, underdelivering “AI” products.
Shaveer Mirpuri is cofounder and CEO of Insite AI, an AI and strategy partner for large consumer brands.
Connect at Groceryshop
Connect at Groceryshop
Accelerate Your Sales, Revenue Growth, and Category Management Initiatives
Groceryshop | September 19-21, 2023 | Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas
Connect with Insite AI at Groceryshop and find out how our revolutionary approach can accelerate your top initiatives. Our team of AI and strategic consulting teams have walked in your shoes, giving them unparalleled insights into your industry-specific hurdles. Our Strategic Advisors are consumer brand and retail veterans from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mars, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven, Kroger, among dozens of others.
Let us guide you in tackling your organization’s distinct challenges head-on. Through our collaborative approach, we craft a tailored solution to elevate your product assortment, pricing strategies, trade promotions, and demand forecasting.
Don’t miss this opportunity to expedite your success and lead your organization toward a more efficient and profitable future.
We’re the only partner that lets you dial in multiple scenarios, and confidently predict how they would perform on a forward looking basis against multiple KPIs, with details down to the most granular level, regardless of complexity. Make confident decisions at either the big-picture strategic or tactical level involving commercial aspects such as assortment, pricing, trade, space, and planning. In one click, foresee the results of exactly what will happen in any given scenario. Our unique capabilities take in multiple conditions and assumptions; alternatively, decision makers can rely on us to leverage the technology on their behalf. Act with extreme certainty, speed, save significant time, and ensure your actions will achieve commercial results.
Define your specific objectives, and receive new and creative ways to reach them.
Are you seeking to grow volume? Maximize prices? Grow shelf space? Improve trade effectiveness? Outperform a competitor? Rationalize spend? Our capabilities “goal seek” the exact new strategies or tactical outputs to achieve this, taking into account all of your business dynamics, beliefs, and nuances. Get multiple novel strategies that are truly implementable and actionable. Fuse your vision with our technological levers that incorporate an incredible number of factors. See the forward looking and granular articulation on the recommendation’s performance. This is something any large team of experts aren’t capable of.
Explainable assortment, space, pricing, and trade promotion decisions.
Harmonizing data and searching it for insights is old news, and few companies see value from it. We provide internal and external narratives that are defensible and truly differentiated. In one click, our capabilities explain and decompose the “why” on a forward-looking basis; and the data is presented in a powerful, immediately understandable manner. Incrementality, demand transference, price elasticities, cross elasticities, attributions, shifts, patterns, and factors affecting your existing or recommended actions are clearly articulated.
Former SVP of Merchandising at 7-Eleven, Brooke brings nearly 20 years of grocery and convenience retail experience to Insite AI. She understands what it takes to build valuable partnerships with retailers, and in her role as EVP of Strategy Consulting, she advises consumer brands on ways to elevate strategic business planning, achieve category leadership, and create optimal shopping experiences for their consumers.
Former leader at Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper Snapple, and Delhaize, Capri brings extensive strategic leadership experience from both retail and supplier roles in the consumer goods industry. She was recognized as a Senior-Level Top Woman in Convenience in 2022 and has also received recognition for her leadership in collaborative/joint business planning with top retailers across multiple channels and formats.
Kristine is a highly accomplished retail executive and former VP of Merchandising at Walmart. Kristine led strategic initiatives that resulted in substantial revenue growth for the company across Grocery and prior to that Personal Care. Widely recognized as a visionary leader, she played a pivotal role in optimizing Walmart’s merchandising with large CPGs.
Why Insite AI?
A Consultative Approach
Our team becomes an extension of your team. Our Strategic Advisors are consumer brand and retail veterans from PepsiCo, Mars, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Walmart, Target, 7-Eleven, Kroger, among dozens of others. Our top priority is ensuring you have the guidance and support you need to achieve your goals and maximize the value of your investment.
Everyone else starts from scratch, yet Insite AI has already invested over eight figures of capital and several years into building leading edge technology; creating unmatched advantages for tackling your top initiatives.
We deeply tailor our engagements and fully configure our solutions to meet the unique needs of your brand. Insite AI is a true innovation partner providing CPGs with fully customizable solutions built to solve their unique challenges, enabling them to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and outperform their competition.
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