Wiki Retail Shake
The Retail Lexicon
Competitive analysis: This involves identifying and comparing data on a firm’s competitors, such as their market position and communication campaigns, in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses.
Tree structure: This is the hierarchical branch structure that classifies the products on a merchant site.
Assortment: An assortment represents all the product ranges offered for sale.
A wide, shallow range characterizes general retailers (e.g. Department stores, grocery stores, supermarkets, supercenters).
A wide, deep assortment represents the products sold by a specialized retailer in one area. (e.g., specialized chain stores such as Decathlon, Leroy Merlin)
A narrow, deep assortment characterizes the products sold by a specialist retailer (e.g. optician, jeweler)
A narrow, shallow assortment characterizes a basic level of products (e.g. small convenience store).
B to B: Business to business refers to a sales relationship between companies or with other companies.
B to C: Business to Customer, which refers to the relationship between companies and individuals.
Big Data: Large data sets with high sales and marketing value that can be harvested and pooled in order to manage information about prospects and customers from web browsing and CRM tools. Data marketing therefore involves accurately defining and managing data on the behavior of target audiences in real time.
Build/Run:
BUILD = project, it is the activity of building (writing) an app or a *new* program.
RUN = maintenance, this is the activity that ensures that the app works effectively. Fixing bugs, making small updates and preventive work.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management): CRM covers all marketing or support measures, or operations aimed at optimizing the quality of the customer relationship, from learning to interacting, building loyalty and maximizing turnover or margin per customer. By extension, it also refers to the software that allows these tasks to be done. « HubSpot is a CRM ».
Crowdfunding: A participatory financing approach in which individuals or companies are asked to finance or sponsor a project or an association.
Dataset: These are widely used in machine learning. They bring together a coherent set of data that can be presented in different formats (text, figures, images, videos, etc.). Each value in a dataset is associated with a characteristic and an observation.
Digital Distribution (DD): Digital Distribution or Product category volume is a measure of the presence of a product or brand in the points of sale in a specific sector. It provides information about the number of points of sale stocking the brand or product inspected in relation to all points of sale likely to list this brand or product at any given moment. It is generally expressed as a percentage and more rarely as an absolute value.
Digital distribution: Large retailer KPIs
Drop shipping: A purely logistical concept, drop shipping refers to e-commerce platforms that do not hold stock: the customer is delivered directly by an external supplier.
Facets: These are the filters that allow you to narrow down the products in a page list. Often by checking boxes.
Syn: filter, faceted search
1P/ 2P/3P fulfilment: Hybrid commercial/logistics concepts « sold by… , shipped by… »
1p = « first party » = retail
E.g: sold and shipped by Amazon
2p = “2nd party”
E.g: sold by XXX and shipped by Amazon
3p = « 3rd party » = marketplace
E.g: sold and shipped by XXX
Range: A range is characterized by its width. It includes many product lines. A range can be short or long depending on the number of products; the width of a range includes all of its products; the height of the range represents its level of quality (top of the range, bottom of the range).
Google Ads: Google Ads is an advertising positioning service offered by Google on a sponsored links program: 90% of the French market, 95% internationally. In fact, advertisers purchase keywords or advertising in Google search results and partner sites.
GSA: Grande Surface Alimentaire (Major supermarket/grocery stores) Such as Leclerc, Carrefour
GSB: Grande Surface de Bricolage (Large DIY retailers). Example: Leroy Merlin, Castorama, Brico Dépôt, Mr Bricolage
GSS: Grande Surface Spécialisée (Large Specialised Retailers). This is a large store selling non-food products specializing in sports, drugs, clothing, etc.
GTIN (Global Trade Item Number): is a barcode number used to identify products in international trade. The GTIN is usually printed on the product packaging and can be scanned to access product information such as price, availability and description. There are several types of GTINs, including:
- UPC (Universal Product Code): used in the United States and Canada to identify mass market consumer products.
- EAN (European Article Number): used in Europe to identify mass market consumer products.
- ISBN (International Standard Book Number): used to identify books.
- JAN (Japanese Article Number): used in Japan to identify mass market consumer products.
The GTIN is managed by GS1, which allocates GTIN codes to businesses and provides them with standards and tools to use these codes effectively.
GS1: is an international organization that provides product coding and information management standards for businesses in all sectors.
Founded in 1973, GS1 operates in over 110 countries worldwide. GS1’s goal is to improve supply chain efficiency and transparency by providing product coding and information management standards that enable products to be effectively tracked and managed throughout their life cycle. GS1 manages the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) system, which is used to identify products in international trade.
GS1 is a not-for-profit organization that works closely with governments, businesses and organizations in all sectors to develop and implement standards that meet the needs of its members.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Artificial intelligence is a concept whereby machines perform tasks that would otherwise require the natural intelligence of the human brain.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Key Performance Indicators (KPIs or Metrics) are the values by which you measure your business/project.
The product line concept: Variations in a product around a basic model constitute a line. For example: different sizes, colors of a garment, variation in the number of doors and options of a car..
The line is characterized by its depth.
Machine Learning: Machine Learning is one of the possible applications of artificial intelligence in which humans input raw data and walk away while the machine learns by itself.
Brand: Under industrial property, a brand or trademark is a « sign » used to distinguish your products or services from those of your competitors.
Marketing mix: The marketing mix comprises all the variables of a commercial policy resulting from prior reflections on the objectives, targets and the chosen positioning.
4P model: Product, Price, Promotion, Place.
Data standardization: When scraping a web page, the product characteristics will not be expressed in the same way: « length 5cm » and on another site: « Length of: 5cm They cannot be compared in computer terms because they are not scored in the same way. Our data scientist has worked to express these in information technology terms, for example « at leroy merlin L= Length at Saint Maclou ». For this work we examine the expressions each brand or retailer uses. We will therefore normalize the product.
Page list: On an e-commerce site, this is the page that lists the products. This is the last level before the product sheet.
Syn: « lowest level »
Customer journey (UX): The customer journey is a framework describing the multiple experiences and touch points that a customer will encounter when building a relationship with a brand.
POS: Point of Sale = store, regardless of its format, or size. Or whether it is brick-and-mortar or ecommerce.
FMCG/Fresh Produce, Meats & Dairy: Fast Moving Consumer Goods/Fresh Produce, Meats, Dairy. Example: « Last week, the turnover of GSA’s FMCG grew strongly compared to 2021, returning to a similar growth rate… »
PIM: Product Information Management = product lists, or product database. Example: Akeneo, Tibco, IBM
POSD/POSI: Point of Sale Display/Point of Sale Information. E.g.: end caps, display stands, posters, demonstration videos.
Product Information Management (PIM ): This is the product list or product database. Example: Stibo, Informatica, Akeneo, etc.
Pure player: Used in the digital domain, « pure player » companies are companies that are only present online. In other words, these are brands that market their products and/or services only on the Internet and not in physical stores or retail outlets.
SRP: Suggested Retail Price
Data quality: Data quality refers to the ability of a company to take action to ensure that the data in its Information System is correct and sustainable over time. Quality data is defined by 5 pillars: accuracy, thoroughness, integrity, freshness and coherence.
Scraping: Web scraping, or data scraping or harvesting is a programming technique that extracts data from a site. This harvesting is done in a structured, systematic way, in order to extract complete and reliable data. The data collected in this way can be reused.
What are scraping and spiders?
Search Engine Advertising (SEA): This is search engine advertising. Paid keywords are used for search engine optimization at the top of web page.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM): This is search engine marketing (includes SEA, SEO and SMO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO targets unpaid (or natural) traffic. It allows brands to improve their website ranking in search engines.
Shrinkflation: Shrinkflation is a sales strategy that consists of stabilizing or increasing the price of a product despite a decrease in product quantity. This is in contradiction with beliefs of the general public and NGOs that denounce the practice. It is legal for companies to implement a shrinkflation strategy.
Social Media Optimization (SMO): SMO allows you to optimize the visibility of a brand/brand on social media. In other words, it is the social media version of SEO.
Spider: A spider is a robot – bot, or crawler, or intelligent software – designed to scroll through the pages of sites, follow links from one page to another, and extract data. In this case, it is called crawling. These are the same tools that are used by Google to scroll through your site and isolate keywords for its SEO.
Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS refers to a software subscription model that includes not only access to the software, but also hosting and maintenance services.
Conversion rate: The conversion rate of a website is the ratio of the number of visitors who have taken an action (purchase or lead) on a website compared to the total number of visitors over a given period: (buyers/visitors]*100)
Uberization: Refers to a new economic model, linked to the digital economy, developed by certain businesses that compete with other firms that use the traditional economy (e.g.: Uber/taxi, Airbnb/hotel). Uberization symbolizes a disruptive model that breaks the codes of the traditional economy.
Competitive intelligence: This involves searching, processing and disseminating information on an industry or sector in which a firm operates. Information can include competitors’ strategies, pricing policies, new products and services, financial results, customers, etc
Price monitoring: Price monitoring is a technique that allows a business, distributor or brand to regularly or permanently monitor the prices charged by its competitors in the market.