Guest post written by Johnny Crosskey, SEO & Content Specialist, The Sports Facilities Companies.
Consumer behavior analytics examines patterns related to movement in your facility, buying habits, and attendance to help facility operators make more informed decisions about promotions, communications, and operational practices. It uses a variety of tools to determine if guests are taking optimal actions based on your revenue and engagement goals. For example, if the goal is to increase per cap spending among tournament attendees, consumer behavior analytics can examine the conditions for which many of the sales are happening or how guests engage with your facility to discover patterns and then adjust how items such as concessions or FEC activities are promoted. The data may also lead to changes in wayfinding or the types of concession items that are offered.
How It Works:
While there are tools that help facilitate the data gathering and analyzing aspects of this process, consumer behavior analytics starts with understanding the optimal path (both in the facility and online) that you’d like for your guests to take. How do guests interact with your venue and how do you want guests to interact with your venue? For example, if you have a per cap spending goal for guests in your facility, it’s critical to consider the paths for getting there whether it’s increasing usage of an FEC or food purchases. From there, you must determine the most common paths for users to reach the desired outcome as well as, ones that fall short of the outcome.
As you gather behavioral data, it’s helpful to break users into segments based on similar characteristics and behaviors to analyze similarities in their paths. This will allow you to build a more comprehensive profile of your guests, their behaviors, and what may lead them to or away from the desired action. Strategies for driving the desired behavior can be developed based on this information.
There are a variety of tools to facilitate this process, including ones that use proprietary algorithms and machine learning to identify facility guests and their consumer intent as well as tools that measure foot traffic throughout your facility.
Benefits:
It goes without saying that the ability to understand what leads customers to purchase more items in your venue is a gamechanger in terms of revenue generation. Consumer behavior analytics tools provide the ability to better understand your guests and target marketing, wayfinding, and product offerings in a way that is most likely to lead to a sale. It can also uncover opportunities that aren’t easy to see during daily facility operations. (See consumer analytics in action.)
Obstacles To Entry:
The consumer analytics process is detailed and time-consuming. It requires combing through as much data as you have available (or choose to examine) to determine specific conclusions and how to put them into practice. It’s also not good enough to have access to consumer analytics data, you must also be able to analyze it, which is a skill unto itself.
Consumer Behavior Analytics In Action:
During the New England Patriots run to Super Bowl XLIX, a quote from coach Bill Belichick gained tremendous popularity. Members of the Patriots’ consumer behavior analytics team noticed heightened mentions of the term “Do your Job” in social media mentions of the team. To capitalize on the trend, they began to develop merchandise using the slogan, which achieved near runaway sales.
