Potloc Insights

The Canadian luxury retail market is red hot right now. Indeed, there has been an increase of upscale brands opening flagship stores in major cities (especially Toronto and Vancouver) over the last three years, notably French fashion houses Chanel, Hermès as well as Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille. According to Retail Insider, almost 40 percent of the about 50 new international retailers that entered Canada in 2017 were considered to be “in the luxury segment of the market”.

These days the grocery store has become much more than just a place to buy food and household goods.   It’s now a social gathering place – and in some cases even a place to play – as the trend toward grocerytainment takes hold.  

Social media surveys aren’t much different from the mail surveys of the old days; they are, after all, lists of questions people can answer by themselves. However, instead of being sent by mail, those online questionnaires are pushed to their target market demographics through social media ads. Let’s explore some of the reasons as to why they have become more and more popular in recent years.

You have probably noticed that some retail stores and restaurants limit the number of items they have in stock, the number of tables they can serve, or even their opening hours. Such creates “scarcity”, and signals to the market what they are offering is desirable. Let’s explore this powerful concept.

Email lists aren’t dead. While it’s not a new marketing channel and open rates have been diminishing, email lists are still highly strategic for most retailers. Furthermore, an increasing number of retailers are using their own email lists to get greater insight on their customers through email surveys, a quick and less expensive manner of reaching consumers.

Loyalty programs are nothing new, in fact, they date back a century ago. A notable, early effort was the US-based S&H Green Stamp program in the 1930s. Consumers were provided with small stamps when they made purchases from participating retailers, stuck them onto pages of booklets, and redeemed them for products when the collected stamps had attained a specific value.