UST Global held its second ‘Retail Razzmatazz’ event this year to promote and propagate knowledge, practices and technical innovations in the retail space. Held at Trivandrum Techno Park from Nov.16 to 20th, the theme of this year’s retail week was ‘Customer Loyalty.’

The week included product development competitions, presentations, retail quiz, the launch of the retail certification drive and a panel discussion. The panelists, Arun Gupta, Group CIO, Shopper’s Stop, Harish Bijoor, CEO Harish Bijoor Consults and Marsha Blakeslee, GM - Industry Practices, UST Gobal, discussed as to how customer loyalty initiatives are getting influenced by social media.

“Loyalty is dead. The programs need change, as today your customers are more diverse than earlier. In the same mall in Delhi, you will find 700 different type of customers. So one has to data mine customer behaviour before coming up with loyalty programs,” said Bijoor. “Social sites are the future, since marketing has become very democratized. Therefore you have social sites becoming engines of information - decision-making sites where one gets to know about what to shop for, where to shop, and how to shop.”

Fellow panelist Arun Gupta concluded by citing social networking sites as tool for reputation management. He said, “Through various social media, corporations can establish, protect, sustain and build their identity.”

source: siliconIndia