Retail Trend Analysis

Retail is not like any other business venture; the industry is a very tricky one. Retailers have learnt not go any business with a ‘gut feeling’ but with strategic planning and structuring of ideas. Knowledge of products, sales trends and customer buying habits are all what a retailer needs. However, these and more can only be deduced by Retail Trend Analysis.

This form of analysis helps to evaluate the past trends comparing with the present situation which help position retailers for the future. Retail sales trend analysis is that strategy that helps retailers know the right buttons to push, the right moves to make and the right people to talk to. Trend analysis also uncovers the truth behind a problem on business, what caused the problem and solutions to eschew that problem.

Relevant data derived from trend analysis can help reposition retailers in areas where their business desperately needs intervention. It gives a valuable insight into the mysteries of the business: the reason for it stagnancy, and how to make things work. Retailers through trend analysis can detect which product has failed, in what area did it fail, how to push the product back up again and which products have continued to increase profit. It is very easy to track your progress through trend analysis, it gives an insight to which sales goals you are meeting and which ones you are missing. Furthermore, trend analysis gives the retailer an understanding of what to do when another crisis hits the business.

It is relatively easy to perform a trend analysis in retail; some retailers use Microsoft Excel, which is an application created for business intelligence. Users can import large amounts of data, create dashboards and alerts. Also, Excel and other trend analysis software empowers retailers with the ability to customize graphs according to key variables that need to be tracked. However, setting up Excel for trade analysis could be time consuming but totally worth it. In addition to this, several other platforms used for trend analysis help to pull data from different systems of your business, practically do the same thing Excel does but without the stress of inputting manually. Excel is effective but prone to some human errors, built-in trend analysis platforms automatically supplies data needed for the business.

There are, however, some considerable factors that further ensure the effective use of trade analysis. These factors help retailers to know when and how to use trade analysis in their business. One of such factors is having a centralized location to view data.

Conclusively, to ensure trade analysis work effectively for your company, the retailer has to monitor sales trend real-time. It is like a job of an investor; he should be aware of most of the activities happening his business. This will help retailers know quickly what is working and what needs to be changed before it is too late.