Marks & Spencer (M&S), the UK-based department store, has expanded its partnership with First Insight, a platform designed to help retailers make better product development and pricing decisions.
M&S has been using First Insight’s predictive analytics to support design, buying and pricing decisions on categories including apparel, lingerie, footwear, accessories, food, home and beauty. With the platform, M&S can test tens of thousands of products across more than 50 departments and adjust its merchandising process accordingly.
First Insight is designed to use online social engagement tools to gather real-time preference, pricing and sentiment data on potential product offerings. The information is filtered through First Insight’s predictive analytics models to determine which products present the greatest opportunity. The solution is enabling M&S to evaluate a greater number of products and reflect direct consumer input in its buying decisions.
Advertisement
“Everything M&S does as a company is filtered through the lens of what we know about our customers, and every decision starts with them,” said Gordon Mowat, Director of Supply Chain and Logistics at M&S in a statement. “First Insight’s technology gives us invaluable feedback on new products during design and development, so we can buy more of what our customer likes and eliminate products that score less well.”
