Full Path Analysis: Decoding Shopper Behavior Beyond Footfall

In this episode of Spieckerman Speaks Retail, host Carol Spieckerman sits down with Joe Shasteen, global manager of advanced analytics at RetailNext, to discuss the latest trends in retail analytics and in-store technology. RetailNext is a pioneer in bringing e-commerce-level analytics to brick-and-mortar stores, helping retailers optimize their physical spaces and enhance the customer experience.

Joe introduces RetailNext's concept of "full path analysis," which provides detailed insights into customer behavior throughout the store. Using strategically placed sensors, retailers can track customer movements, dwell times, and engagement with displays, fixtures, and other store elements. The data collected from the sensors helps retailers capture customer attention, optimize store layouts, and improve staff allocation.

The conversation explores the critical role data plays in improving store operations, from optimizing labor allocation to enhancing conversion rates. RetailNext's analytics connects the dots, enabling retailers to align staffing with customer traffic patterns and identify opportunities to engage shoppers more effectively.

The interview also touches on how RetailNext's technology can assist with loss prevention and asset protection. Using AI to flag potential instances of theft or suspicious behavior, retailers can react in real time as incidences are identified. 

Joe wraps up by sharing insights on broader retail trends, highlighting the importance of creating meaningful in-store experiences that go beyond simple transactions. He emphasizes the value of using data to optimize the customer journey and strengthen brand connections in physical retail spaces.

Key Takeaways:

• How retailers can leverage full-path analysis to drive conversion, mitigate shrink, optimize labor, and elevate store design.
• Why basing labor allocation on traffic trends rather than sales data improves store efficiency and conversion rates.
• How in-store data analytics can create deeper brand experiences and bridge the gap between online and offline retail.
• How retailers can validate test-and-learn experiments in advance of rollout.

RetailNext Website
Joe Shasteen on LinkedIn

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Transcript

 CAROL SPIECKERMAN

Hey everyone, this is Carol and welcome to Spieckerman Speaks Retail, where we navigate retail from now to next through my latest retail trajectories.  and interviews with industry experts who help us chart the course. Regular listeners know that one of my top retail trajectories is that the store is the core in 2024.

Retailers are swinging attention and investment back to brick and mortar for lots of reasons. Stores are a great live testing ground for all kinds of customer-facing technology, not to mention next-level store associate tools. And as part of that, the old fallback mantra that not everything that matters can be measured is fading fast.

The fact is, all kinds of in-store activity can not only be measured these days, but tracked and acted on in real time. My guest, Joe Shasteen, is the global manager of advanced analytics at RetailNext. Joe and his team help retailers design and test the impact of all those changes happening in brick and mortar to take shopper experience to new heights.

RetailNext is the first retail IOT platform to bring the kind of high -evel shopper analytics we're used to seeing in the e-commerce world, right into physical stores. More than 560 retailers in over 95 countries count on RetailNext’s analytics software and their retail smarts to better understand the shopper journey, boost same-store sales, keep theft in check, and just have their stores running like, well-oiled machines. I can't wait to dive into all of this with Joe. So let's get started.  

Hey, Joe, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for being on Spieckerman Speaks Retail

JOE SHASTEEN
Great. Thank you for having me. 

We had talked before the interview and something really stuck with me after our conversation.

I started thinking about the term “path to purchase”. That was a term that's been around for a really long time in retail. It was central to the shopper marketing movement. Just the idea that you could track the shopper journey was a pretty novel idea back in the day and everybody was really excited about it.

But RetailNext has coined a new term that to me feels like it might be an update to that. You call it “full path analysis”. Can you tell me more about that and how it might speak to new possibilities or new capabilities or how they've evolved? 

JOE SHASTEEN

Yeah, definitely. Technology for in-store analytics has really come a long way to better mirror the types of analytics that can be more easily provided in the e- commerce or online space.

So it's very easy to get metrics around clicks and impressions in the online space. But up until relatively recently, it had been tough to get metrics around the middle or the top of the funnel for the brick and mortar space. So that's really what RetailNext aims to provide with full path analysis.

RetailNext is able to put multiple sensors strategically placed throughout a retail space. And with those sensors, we're able to understand more about the overall shopper journey. So when a shopper enters the store, where are they first going? What is capturing their attention? Where are they bypassing?

Where are they stopping and engaging with? And we're able to do this to provide more details for our retailers so they can understand the middle and the top of the funnel. What are those behaviors that are really driving that purchasing behavior in a customer? And what can be adjusted to tweak that customer journey?

If it might not be meeting expectations, how can we use the data that we get from full path data to better optimize that journey and better give customers the experience that retailers intend for them to have? In a traditional brick-and-mortar space with RetailNext data in the full path we're aiming to be the pulse of the store, allowing our retailers to understand the full journey, not just when somebody makes a purchase, but from the moment they enter a store.

And even in some instances from the moment they pass by on the outside of a store. To understand more about customer behavior and that overall customer journey that's ultimately going to drive purchase and drive conversion for our retailers. What is first capturing customers attention? Where are they first dwelling? What is the best type of fixture or fixture layout to help display product, but also staff journey where your associates are best able to interact with customers on the floor where a customer spending time that maybe associates currently maybe not spending as much time as they should be? So you can provide additional guidance to associates so that they know where can they best meet the customer where they're at and engage them and have the customer understand the brand and connect with the brand a little bit better, ultimately driving that final conversion or that final point of sale that we want to see.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

When you talk about those sensors around the store, are those just completely invisible, and do store associates know that they're there? 

JOE SHASTEEN

If you know to look for them, you can see them, but there are ways that we can recess mount them or hide them there. But everything that we do is completely private?

We're not collecting any personally identifiable information. Everything is turned into anonymous data that we aggregate and provide details. So, yes, people would be aware that they're there, but it's no different than any sort of security cameras. People, I think, are pretty understanding that at this point when you enter a retail store, you are likely to be on camera.

But everything that we are capturing is all completely anonymous. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

What types of retailers and brands do you mostly work with? Are there certain characteristics or goals that they tend to have in common? 

It goes to two points. RetailNext provides data on the full path analysis journey, but we also do more traditional retailer metrics around just store traffic in and out of the store.

That can be the complete range of retailers, from small, digitally-native brands that are just opening their first physical store to larger retailers, national retailers, worldwide retailers across all different segments, apparel, health and beauty, jewelry, footwear, where they might have hundreds, if not thousands of stores.

 Not only in the US, but even worldwide. So just anybody who's really interested in trying to improve the efficiency of their store and drive more conversion. You don't understand the true opportunity of a physical store location until you understand the traffic and how many people are actually coming in and converting, but also not converting.

And how you can drive additional conversion for those customers who are coming in and at this point, not making that purchase. So it's really trying to connect with that missing point that previously you wouldn't have if you don't have store traffic in and out, but then also for the foot path analysis side of things that is a customer who is probably more interested in the test and learning aspect in a retail environment, testing out new fixtures, new signage. It's vital for those customers who are really in that mindset of making a change.

Seeing if it's a positive or negative impact and then either rolling it out to the larger fleet or maybe taking a step back, reconsidering what they're trying to do, and then maybe testing again another option that might be more successful before a larger fleet-wide rollout, which can be very expensive if a mistake is made there. Maybe rethink that and make sure that it is successful before rolling that out across hundreds of thousands of stores. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

That's really relevant right now to be able to drill down on that and figure out what's working and what's not working. In some cases, to have the opportunity to deconstruct that and parlay it into other locations or maybe just learn from it and apply it someplace else. 

JOE SHASTEEN

Yeah, I mean, that's the core reason for having a full path analysis in a retail lab is to do that testing and learning really enabled that middle top of the funnel metrics around your store traffic around your zone traffic, your area traffic, what is actually just pass-by areas to the store versus which parts of the store actually getting customers to stop and engage.

And then, providing that additional guidance or training to associates on where they should be getting out to interact with customers. So there's a lot of value that can be driven from the test and learn environments using retail labs. And there are a lot of different sorts of metrics that you can look at.

If you see a fixture that might be placed towards the back of the store and doesn't get a lot of people, but maybe you see that it engages those customers who make it there. Maybe try testing moving it towards the front of the store where there's a lot more pass-by traffic.

How does that drive incremental sales of product off of that? And kind of conversely, if you see a fixture that's maybe towards the front getting a lot of pass by, but not really driving a lot of engagement. Moving that to an area towards the back of the store where if people want it, they're going to be looking for it and they're going to be trying to find it, but maybe it's not something that's leading to impulse purchases.

So it doesn't need to be so top of mind for every customer. So there are lots of different things that you can test and look through when you're seeing not just what the bottom line sales are for certain products or certain fixtures, but that traffic, that dwell and those portions that are leading to the sale, not just the lagging indicator of the sale itself.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

I bet the merchandising teams go crazy with this data.  

JOE SHASTEEN

Yeah, there's a lot merchandising and operations, especially when we're talking about staffing and labor allocation, there's a lot of great use cases for full path analysis data that way. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

Speaking of test and learn, in store automation is a hot topic right now, and it's very polarizing.

Some customers love it, but others actively oppose it. Retailers have been anxious in some cases to roll out these fully automated formats, but they've had to tap on the brakes, reintroduce people power, and take it one step at a time just because of the pushback from consumers. So what's your take on that, Joe, and how do you guys get involved with these automation experiments?

JOE SHASTEEN

Yes, we've actually seen a lot of new technologies piloted in retail lab locations. Two of the major ones, one of them, as you mentioned, was the self-checkout option. Another one that we work with maybe a little bit less often is adding the mobile POS option. A third one that's also been fairly interesting more recently is around queue alerting technologies.

So I can talk about that in a little bit, but I think to go back to your initial point around self-checkout, we've really seen that it can be a powerful tool to address long lines or long queues. But for the most part, what we see is that, when given an option, customers still like to have that personal touch of actually interacting with an associate, being checked out by them, maybe talk to them, learning more about the brand, learning more about other complimentary products, things like that.

We do see that self-checkout can be powerful and a very helpful tool for alleviating some long queues. In the end, completely abandoning the regular checkout method and going back to the self-checkout only. We don't find that is the effective way to go, as many customers are still looking for that personal touch.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

Yeah, and the technology has to be pretty perfect also to pull that off because not having humans at the ready, that's a big leap. 

JOE SHASTEEN

Yes, definitely. But, at the same time, there are some uses for it.

But to completely abandon regular checkout is a little bit of a ways off for now. Another technology point I wanted to mention that we've been seeing is the queue alerting piece. Being able to understand that, maybe you don't have self-checkout, but you might have additional registers that you can open up or you can move customers to a different cash wrap.

Maybe it’s not the main one but one one 15 or 20 feet away that you can open up using the full path analysis technology to understand length of queues or occupancy of queues or average wait times. And based on what we're seeing from those times, starting to trigger alerts and send those out to associates to let them know, Hey, there's X amount of people in the line.

They're waiting on average for Y amount of minutes. We should open a new register and that can help to alleviate that line. If you are going through a different technology, other than the self-checkout route, more traditional opening up a new queue, it makes it easier and more of an automated way to generate some of these insights and open it up rather than needing to have a store manager or someone always oversight on that line.

 We have some automated methodologies where we can do this a little bit easier now. And that's shown to be very effective as well in that queue line alleviation or reducing that wait time. 

 CAROL SPIECKERMAN

So they're receiving these alerts in real time?

JOE SHASTEEN

Yes, there are options for receiving real time alerting using sometimes RetailNext Data or third party platforms as well.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN
Great. Talking about convenience, because at the end of the day, a lot of this just centers around convenience, and there are so many convenience options now. Retailers have realized that convenience and choice are basically synonymous. Now you've got curbside pickup, in store pickup, home delivery, and so on.

But as you talked about earlier, retailers are more than ever invested in having customers come to their stores and their physical locations and for a lot of reasons. But how do they know when their strategies to drive shoppers to their stores are paying off? You talked about tracking conversion. I'd like to learn more about that. How do you track conversion and marry some of the POS data or data that's provided by retailers with the traffic data and come to these conclusions? 

JOE SHASTEEN

Yeah, definitely. And to go back to your point about options for convenience, I think, especially what we've seen maintained over as we've gotten a few years out of the pandemic, curbside was pretty big initially.

We've seen curbside fall off a bit. BOPIS is still quite a big aspect. A lot of people coming in for BOPIS, but curbside I would say is something that's a little bit more rare. So we're not seeing as much utilization of that. But a lot of our retailers are very focused on making that BOPIS journey to get customers into the store.

As you mentioned, it's very valuable to get customers in the store because, as we've seen from some research recently, customers expect the store to be more than just a place to transact. If they just want to make a transaction, you could buy online just as easily. If you want to go into the store, you're expecting a little bit of a different experience, right?

Whether that's working with a knowledgeable associate to learn more about the brand, maybe to touch and feel the product to try it on. So it's important from that standpoint for when customers are coming into the store, whether it be for BOPIS or whether it be for that experience that we're able to measure success of that journey.

So one of the ways that we can do that is by looking at conversion rate. Taking your sales transactions over a period of time and looking at the total amount of people that came into the store, marrying that with your BOPIS data, just so you understand how many of these people actually came in to maybe do a buy online pickup in-store or how many people maybe came in to do a return.

You can factor that a bit into your conversion rate, but overall, once you get a customer in the store, it’s an opportunity to connect with them and either provide another conversion opportunity or a complimentary purchase or an upsell, increase their basket. I would say measuring that conversion rate and setting baselines of conversion rates or sales metrics before new tests are implemented or new BOPIS strategies are implemented is important.

And from there, setting the standard of how it looks after, are we seeing a trend line shift? Does it seem like this is resonating with customers and leading to additional conversion or is it leading to a higher basket as well? So that's one way of doing it traditionally, but to go back to full path analysis, what we can also do with that data is understand when people are coming in, maybe going straight to the area for BOPIS or straight to the area for returns.

We look at ratios of how many shoppers continue to go into different portions of the store. Are there certain incentives that can be offered for people coming in for a return? Are there slight discounts that can be offered? If you come in for a return, you have two-week window with a 5 percent discount on a sale, something like that.

So looking at how many customers come in just for that return, just for that purpose, to pick up and leave immediately. That may not be considered part of abandonment rate, but you can still see what shopper behaviors are taking place after that purpose, after that return, and understand, is that strategy working? Is it moving the needle? Is it getting more shopping behavior or is it not? And from there, then you can pivot and change strategies, change training of associates, test out new ways to drive additional shopping behavior, which ultimately will hopefully lead to more conversion.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

It sounds like the best results would come from retailers sharing more data with you.

So, are you finding that they are open to that? That they are even anxious to get better results and drill down and get more granular with the insights? 

JOE SHASTEEN

I would say lots of customers are very interested in sharing that point-of-sale data. Really trying to understand not only conversion at the store level, but even conversion at a fixture level.

I've got all these products on there. How many dwells am I having in these particular areas? And how many sales are these dwells leading to? How many dwells do I typically need? Are there a lot of dwells with no sales? Is it difficult for customers to understand what is being offered by that fixture?

So then do we need to rethink it? Do we need to simplify things? There are lots of metrics that can be generated based on customers providing their point of sale data and marrying that up with the in-store analytics data around traffic and dwells and shopping behavior. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

Workforce management, which I think you just alluded to a minute ago, and optimizing the way associates are utilized in the store and that trade-off between high tech and high touch and when you should deploy one or the other.

 How does RetailNext support that piece of the business and especially when retailers are so determined to drive this relentless productivity out of the stores that they do decide to open? 

JOE SHASTEEN

It's very easy for customers to provide labor data – punch in, punch out data, clock in, clock out data, and from there we can layer that up against the traffic that's coming into the store during those hours and from many retailers. We have a lot of experience doing this and looking at correlations between what we refer to as our shopper per labor hour ratio.

A lower shopper per labor hour ratio means more staff for every customer that's in store. We typically will find that a lower SPLH as we refer to it will lead to a higher conversion rate. So they're inversely correlated as you drive down your shopper per labor hour ratio. You drive up your conversion rate.

And there's a fairly strong correlation between those two metrics. We work with our retailers to find those windows of time where maybe there's a regular Wednesday at three, where we see that surprisingly, there's more traffic than you would expect. But your labor is a little bit lower.

So are we able to maybe not add labor, but reallocate labor from Wednesday morning and have them come in a little bit later. So trying to be to some degree, a net zero. We aren’t trying to add or reduce, we're just trying to reallocate based on the trends that we're seeing. And that can oftentimes be a really effective way of helping to drive up a few incremental points in conversion during certain times of the day.

We see a strong correlation between SPLH and that conversion rate. Now, if you have fewer shoppers for every associate, maybe that extra couple of people can now interact. They're now getting their questions answered and they're not leaving the store frustrated. Instead, they're converting. And driving up that conversion rate. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

I think that could ripple out to better employee satisfaction because associates are more productive. They're not feeling like they're just sitting on their hands when they're at work and are doing what they were hired to do.

JOE SHASTEEN

Definitely. This data is intended to be shared. Our retailers can choose how far they want to share this data In their organization, whether it's staying more headquarters or if they want to bring it down to the store, to store managers, to arm their fleet with this data. But it's really intended to be a useful tool for the people on the ground in the store to drive that greater efficiency.

When you get a customer in store, this is your opportunity. You want to connect with them. in the way that you're intending to. So that's an important piece of the full path analysis data, but just even traffic and labor data and marrying those two together and understanding relationships between those two data points.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

How can you make sure that the right people are getting the right information at the right time? And maybe even more importantly, how can you ensure that they act on it in enough time because, of course, there are lots of different workers within a store, there are store managers and others. How do you disseminate that information in a way that it becomes actionable?

JOE SHASTEEN

Within RetailNext, we have a UI that's updated basically in real time so that this data can be provided to whoever has access and there's no limitations on who has access to the data. It's all up to the retailers themselves. And from there, we partner with them, trying to understand their goals, what they're trying to do, what are, what are the metrics that they're trying to improve upon?

And then from there, we work with the people who are going to be actually driving those metrics, who will to be in the store. Actually having the most impact on the day-to-day growth for whether it's conversion, whether it's ATV, whether it's just overall bottom line sales, working with them, providing some of the best practices that we've seen around how to drive those behaviors, but then partnering up with our retailers as well, understanding what their traditional training methods are.

Are there any tweaks? Are there any other changes that are operations that they might use to better utilize this data. We really try to partner very closely with our retailers and provide as much help and as guidance as they want. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

Let's talk about one more big challenge in retail. There's a lot of upside to what we're talking about, but there have been so many headlines about shrink, whether you're talking about organized retail crime, or petty theft Now you have retailers actually putting numbers to it to the tune of millions of dollars and being very open about the impact it's having on their bottom lines. The exciting thing is there's a lot of great new technology that's getting ready to flood into brick and mortar and it's going to make shopping so much more exciting and obviously more quantifiable as we've been talking about. And I think a lot of that technology will be directed in some way toward asset protection, but nobody has seemed to have come up with a singular solution to it.

I think everyone understands that it will take a combination of solutions. I'd love to learn what RethinkRetail is doing on that front. Is there anything that you guys are doing to help mitigate that problem that just doesn't seem to be going away? 

JOE SHASTEEN

Definitely. Yes, we do have an asset protection offering as well.

Using our Aurora sensor, the same thing that we use in our full path analysis for entrance traffic in entrance traffic out metrics. And these auroras will store video so that if you need to go back and pull an event to see what was going on or for filing police reports or data like that.

We also have some AI that's able to determine what we will call “a shopper not present”. So if there is internal theft going on where transactions are being rung up, but we're not seeing customers on the customer side of the cash wrap, those times can be flagged and it can be very easily just checked to say “This is normal. We expect this,” or “This is surprising.” Our platform can provide many data points around the video finding events and trying to identify instances of potential shrink and more easily able to flag that. So whoever is responsible for identifying this can easily go through countless hours of video more quickly by just seeing some options that we've already flagged for them, where it looks like there might be some suspicious behavior.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

That's great. That definitely sounds like a big part of the solution. 

I can imagine that with over 560 retailers and 95 countries as a customer base and with RetailNext supporting so many of these different opportunities and yes, challenges that we've talked about, you've probably gained a lot of insight and I would think there'd be some big picture takeaways that might be valuable to the industry.

Are there any trends that you're seeing, Joe, that you think are really important or directional?

JOE SHASTEEN

It goes back to the labor allocation and staffing piece. One thing that I think is important is that trying to start to allocate labor based more on traffic in trends as opposed to sales transaction trends. I think can be a very valuable tool because it lets you know the opportunity to make a sale versus if you're staffing based off of sales transactions. That's already the point at which a sale was made. So if you're staffing to that and you already had an hour where your labor was under-allocated for that time, and that led to the low sales transactions, you can get into a cycle of continuing to allocate labor at a much lower rate than looking at traffic would suggest.

So one thing that can be very useful is starting to look at traffic and allocate labor based off the leading indicator of traffic as opposed to sales transactions. And then taking that a step further and using the full path analysis data and also the shopper per labor hour trends and correlating those with conversion, but using that full path analysis data to provide more guidance around “We're seeing that a lot of customers are spending time in this area of the store, and we're not seeing associates spend as much time.” Providing more guidance around what are those key areas of the store that seem to be resonating with customers where maybe staff are just not getting out there right now.

 Maybe there are too many people at the cash wrap queue where they’re having to spend all their time behind the point of sale area, getting people checked out. So what can we do to alleviate some of that? To get associates out on the floor a little bit more to interact and engage and hopefully drive that additional conversion or drive that additional purchase of another complimentary item, providing that overall experience that customers are looking for when they come into the store, because, they're not looking to just make a transaction. If they come into the store, they want something else. To connect with the brand, to connect with an associate who's knowledgeable, all those other details. Arming associates with that information is a really valuable way to help drive those incremental behaviors that will improve the bottom line for a physical store.

 CAROL SPIECKERMAN

That's interesting, because it's one thing to have the actual bodies in the store, but they need to be where they need to be to interact with the customers. And it seems really straightforward, but I'm sure sometimes they're not even really aware where those opportunities are to really pour it on in certain areas of the store that can have a lot more impact.

JOE SHASTEEN
Exactly. I mean, especially when things get busy, whether it's the cash rep queue, fitting rooms being busy, there are a lot of things going on and lots of potential missed opportunities to really engage with customers when they're actually in the shopping portion of their journey, rather than in the try on or the checkout portion of their journey. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

Are there ways that you make this type of data available outside of your customer base? 

JOE SHASTEEN

Not the full path analysis data, but we do have benchmarking data that we can provide to customers. It’s very useful for understanding not only how you’re doing and looking at your own traffic data, but how is the market doing? And based on what you're seeing in the market, you can have some additional context. Maybe you're down a few percentage points in traffic, but the market's down a little bit more.

Our performance Pulse is a metric that we update on our dashboard on a weekly basis and we also have a monthly report that we update on our website that provides key trends from both the traffic perspective as well as a macroeconomic perspective of what we're seeing in the US. As you can imagine over the last couple months it's been very heavy inflation related. 

 CAROL SPIECKERMAN

So how can people access those reports? 

JOE SHASTEEN

There's the website, there's also a dashboard. If you just provide your email address, we can provide these links as well, they can be shared and then you have access to that wealth of data.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

That's great, and you guys are a truly global company, so you're talking about a pretty nice representation on a global basis. 

JOE SHASTEEN

Most of our metrics are US-based. We have expanded to provide some higher level metrics around Europe, the U. K. The Middle East as well. We are always looking to expand. And then if there are any questions around additional data or additional cuts, me and my team, the advanced analytics team at RetailNext, is always very happy to engage in those conversations and see what other details that we might be able to provide that would be useful.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN 

Great. This has been such a great conversation. We've covered a lot of ground. Obviously, RetailNext covers a lot of ground with retailers and brands. What's next? 

JOE SHASTEEN

It's really around the overall in-store journey optimization. I think there have been a lot of questions around the offline online convergence. But I think it also comes down to something that I mentioned before, using the store as not just a place to transact, but a place for customers to connect with the brand and to learn more.

It needs to be a way for the retailer to derive what they want that customer journey to look like and to try to set up the store in a way that creates the most efficient customer journey. To tell that brand story, get the messaging across, and using RetailNext data or other in-store analytics providers data is a valuable way to get insight into things that you've never been able to get insight into.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

Well, that's exciting, and I have to believe that all of that work, as it continues, will just make it better for everyone, make it better for shoppers, better for retailers. It's not just about their bottom lines. I think it is going to improve the overall experience that we're all having in stores. 

JOE SHASTEEN

Yep, that's, that's what it's all about is improving that experience for customers to drive that additional loyalty.

Maybe their experience was so good they're going to be coming back multiple times and you're going to have a customer for years rather than just a one time purchaser. 

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

You bet. That's the goal. Thank you for being with me today, Joe. It was great talking to you, getting some updates on all the excitement that's happening in brick-and-mortar and where things might go next.

I think it's going to be a really interesting holiday shopping season in particular with tools like this available. I think we're going to see some really exciting things in brick-and-mortar. So thank you so much for being with me and I'll look forward to following your progress. 

JOE SHASTEEN

Thank you so much for having me.

CAROL SPIECKERMAN

To learn more about the work that Retailnext is doing to optimize the in store experience and to check out their latest performance pulse reports and other great insights and updates, visit Retailnext. net. And you can connect with Joe on LinkedIn, Joe Shasteen. You can bring conversations like this to life in your spaces. Just reach out to team@spieckermanretail.com com to book a discovery call. And if you like what you're hearing, please do like, share, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platforms until next time.