If 2020 taught us anything, it was that the retail industry experienced a sudden disruption as COVID-19 impacted their in-store customer engagement. Retailers had to pivot their strategy to reach their customers in new ways while finding quick solutions to the supply chain challenges they were presented with. The lessons learned will continue to be applied to their business strategy moving forward because consumer behavior has shifted. 

In 2021, the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries created and implemented hybrid marketing strategies to engage customers through many different channels.1 Customers now have the flexibility to engage with retailers through a multitude of channels, but that opens up new challenges for retailers as they work to beat their competition in a noisy market. As businesses are opening back up, it’s imperative that the retail industry can track, understand, and engage customers in a meaningful way through various marketing analytics strategies.

According to an Accenture report, the long-term trends of digitalization and ecommerce, higher customer expectations, and transformed supply chains are here to stay. What consumers are buying and how they are shopping has changed dramatically as a result of the pandemic, and these new habits are continuing.2 And the vast majority of consumers who have increased their use of digital and omnichannel services—such as home delivery, curbside pickup, or shopping via social media platforms—expect to sustain these activities into the future. Accenture research indicates a 169% increase in ecommerce purchases from new or low frequency users.3 To meet these new consumer demands and support their own business initiatives, retailers should invest in their data foundation now. 

The modern retail data stack proves that when retailers invest in a culture of data, they gain the ability to quickly navigate shifting customer priorities. With the goal of increasing customer acquisition and retention, it’s critical to evaluate how your tech stack is impacting your ability to unlock agility when it comes to personalization, supply chain, and merchandising.

With higher consumer expectations, it is imperative to offer a personalized buyer experience to stay relevant. Data can allow retailers to drive additional shopper satisfaction by optimizing customer services and support with deeper insights about each customer’s journey. Taking it one step further, when they introduce additional data sources through Snowflake Data Marketplace, retailers can leverage industry data sets allowing them to hyperpersonalize the buyer experience. «Consumers today build their own personal digital worlds, so they don’t want to be seeing anything irrelevant online from brands. Don’t pull them out of their world; retailers need to rely on data and personalization to meet consumers where they are. The modern retail data stack does just this,» said Zarmina Niazie, from the Fivetran Product Marketing team.

Retailers need to be able to adapt to unforeseen market changes and trends that have caused challenges to supply chains. Retailers are still experiencing shortages and delays in production and deliveries, causing negative impacts throughout the supply chain that ultimately lead to poor customer satisfaction. Data-driven insights enable retailers to forecast demand and manage their supply chain more efficiently. With flow-of-goods analytics, suppliers are able to meet shopper demands, achieve granular insights from factory to point of sale and better prepare for unpredictable events. 

The combination of Fivetran, Snowflake, and Tableau provide a modern approach to bringing data together and allowing retailers to quickly maximize their potential in the form of insights. Fivetran was created to deliver  users’ data from any source, without the hassle of coding or infrastructure management, and without the need for data pipeline maintenance. The Snowflake Data Cloud enables users to work with their data, virtually without limits on scale, performance, or flexibility. Business intelligence tools such as Tableau are a critical component to the modern data tech stack because they allow any business user access to data in a way that is easy to digest, allowing for an increase in data-driven decisions. Leveraging this data tech stack will create a modern data culture within your organization. 

Learn how you can quickly maximize the potential of data in the upcoming webinar Improving Time to Value: A Modern Data Stack Staple. Register today.


  1. accntu.re/3yx6IlH
  2. accntu.re/3Afe92H
  3. accntu.re/3ybHWHO