Nordstrom: Customer Insight Methods

I would suggest that Nordstrom use several different customer insight methods in order to truly understand the needs and wants of their customers. A very good idea for them would be to tune in on social media listening. The web is constantly growing and social media has become a large accepted part. It can easily be used to gather information from customers quickly and the best part is that it's completely free. Nordstrom should provide customers with an easy way to leave feedback on their products and service and should also be prepared to deal with heavy criticisms. In studies it has shown that during service interactions, the most important thing to the customer is how much time and effort they have to invest in the whole process.
Nordstrom could use customer effort reduction to give the customer a more desirable shopping experience.
Nordstrom should also analyze the data they have on different customers and use it to create different groups of customers that have different needs. By doing so they can focus on pleasing certain areas of people by adding or enhancing products, services, or marketing. This insight method is called customer segmentation and is widely used. One of the most important things a company can utilize is feedback. Feedback provides information about reactions to a certain product or task and can easily be used as a basis for improvement. Feedback should be collected on a daily bases and organized so that it is easy to read and understand. Nordstrom could compile projects focused on increasing the amount of satisfaction from customers and basic improvements. This method of customer insight is called feedback analysis and I feel it is one of the most important customer insight methods and should always be used when trying to better understand the needs and wants of your
customers. Nordstrom's target customers seem to be middle to upper-class women. I feel also that middle to

upper-class women are also the core customers because over 70% of Nordstrom's sales are females.
A great way for Nordstrom to collect and analyze definitive information is called Big Data. Underneath all of the comments on the internet is a huge amount of data about what customers actually do. This information can supply companies with important information about what customers click, what they purchase, and what there habits are. Although this method is great for gather information on core customers it also is not an easy task. It involves collecting data that is so large and complex that it is very difficult to process using typical on-hand database management tools. Some of the challenges using big data are having to capture information, the curation of the information, and also storage of the information. Not to mention also having to search for the information, transfer it so it can be collected, and analyzing it so it can be transformed into a visualization. It's better to use larger data sets because companies can aqcuire additional information from analysis of larger sets of related data, rather than smaller sets with the same overall amount of data. The amount of data that is collected is usually around a few dozen terabytes (one terabyte is 1000 gigabytes) up to many petabytes (1000 terabytes) of data in a single data set. I feel the use of big data will open of doors to more productivity growth and consumer surplus. Other companies that have used big data have
increased there operating margins by as much as 60%. Big data is going to be a key factor in the competition and growth of future and existing companies. It can be used to create strategies, to innovate, to compete, and capture value from very important real time data. Big data also offers a great way to see which companies pose the biggest threats towards Nordstrom. The information could be taken an analyzed by experts to determine which of their customers are shopping at different stores and what they purchased and perhaps why they went to a different store. Also they could take the information to do research on the companies that are the biggest competitors. When researching competitors it definetly helps to have an idea of how much profit they are making based on there sales. The website “Forbes” is an excellent source of information on different companies such as the name of the company, the country of origin, sales numbers, profit

margins, total assets, and market value. This website is a very easy way to find accurate information about companies world-wide and should always be used when doing research on a competing company.