Virgin Retail

As part of a UK-wide campaign to modernise and optimise performance, global music retailer Virgin Megastores has introduced Experian's cutting-edge customer counting and analysis systems across its network of UK retail outlets.

Music retail is widely recognised as one of the toughest sectors and retailers cannot afford to rest on their laurels. It is vital that they continually develop their products and processes to keep up with the changing landscape as it is easy for businesses to fall behind and become staid in a fast-moving sector.

Virgin worked with Experian company, FootFall, to implement the system which has allowed it to analyse footfall trends and gain an unprecedented understanding of customer behaviour in-store.

FootFall installed unique overhead thermal counters in all stores to monitor shopper activity and produce accurate daily breakdowns. Once compared to sales data, this allowed Virgin to calculate customer conversion rates – a vital measure of success for retailers.

FootFall set up further systems to produce simple, usable information from the data collected. Customer counts, conversions to sales and average transaction values (ATVs) could be compiled and analysed by time (hour,day, week, period or year) and by section (company, division, region or store). The resulting information could be fed down to all layers of the company via Virgin’s intranet and FootFall’s interactive software, providing an instant guide to which initiatives were successful and which were failing to take effect.

Jason Toy, Divisional Manager South, Virgin Retail, said: 'From the outset we linked the FootFall information to our store customer service programme which has been extremely effective in creating a clear understanding of how service drives conversion.We will be year-on-year with FootFall in June, which will provide us with another level of information to better understand what is driving good or poor performance at store level. This provides us with the ability to develop and improve on current systems and find unique strategies that appeal to the customer profile of each individual store and area.'

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