Argos: Using Social Insights to Lead a Retail Revolution

Shopping. Probably the last thing we want to think about – along with tinsel and guzzling cheese 24/7 – now the festive season is over.

However, our latest case study from UK retail giant Argos is a really interesting and innovative story we hope will excite you in 2015 whilst you sip gingerly on that green tea.

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About Argos

Argos – for our international readers – are a UK based retailer of toys, home furnishings, personal care and technology, with over 40 years of trading behind them. A massive 95% of the British population live within 10 miles of one of Argos’ 750+ stores.

Argos are also industry leaders in the digital world, and with over 738 million yearly website visits, they are one of the UK’s largest high street retailers online.

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In-store innovation

Having focused a lot of their attention on the digital world, Argos realised there was a way their two worlds – digital and in-store – could work more harmoniously and in an innovative way to transform their consumers’ experience when shopping in their stores.

Argos embarked upon the ambitious project of opening 53 new digital stores.

Out with the traditional stacks of laminated catalogues and in with shiny new iPads for customers to peruse over 43,000 products through. This change was bound to draw a mixed reaction, a reaction Argos wanted to keep on top of.

Using Brandwatch, Argos were able to keep an eye on all online conversation and reaction to the 53 new digital stores.

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For such a big retailer, with over 123 million store customers per year, that’s potentially a pretty huge chunk of social data. Managing, dissecting and understanding that volume of conversation was always going to be the main challenge.

With Brandwatch Analytics, Argos were able to implement Rules to categorize the data by store, sentiment and using a feature released last year – Brandwatch Demographics – by gender, profession and location.

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Understanding social data

Equipped with real time insights, Argos could quickly understand which stores were performing well and which elements of the new digital stores customers loved and what elements they weren’t so keen on.

“Using social insights, we can understand which stores are performing well for customers and identify areas for improvement.” James Finch – Customer and Digital Insight Manager, Argos

Head office now had a detailed top-down view of what customers thought of over 50 stores, and more importantly, thanks to the Brandwatch Demographics feature, they could start to understand who their customers were and where the social conversation originated.

Brandwatch Demographics identified that men and women reacted differently to the new digital stores. Men overall seemed to approve of the digital change and were especially interested in the high-tech features. Women however, spoke more positively about the new approach to customer service.

“Throughout the launch of digital stores and the implementation, social was crucial in providing real-time information on customer satisfaction.” – James Finch, Customer and Digital Insights Manager, Argos

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Looking to the future

The future is bright for Argos and their digital store concept.

“We’re planning future digital store roll-outs and we’ll be using Brandwatch Analytics to track every step of the way” – James Finch Customer and Digital Insights Manager, Argos.

Mastering everything from Rules and Demographics to categorize social data, Argos saw impressive results with their new digital store launch.

Download the case study in full to find out exactly how Argos used Brandwatch Analytics to monitor the public’s perception to their new store concept.