Retail is a significant economic sector so trends occurring within the sector are important to follow as the sector signals how the economy is developing. Growth is expected in 2024, even amidst inflation, labour shortages, and global tensions. Digital Journal has heard from retail experts who look at marketing, cybersecurity and hiring.
Marketing and social media
Social media has become the main non-traditional channel used for customer support. As a result of this shift, data from social media management and analytics company Sprout Social shows that retail marketers can expect to see 18 percent more social messages this holiday season, with increases projected across Instagram (27 percent), Twitter (19 percent), and Facebook (7 percent).
Sprout Social’s CMO Jamie Gilpin has explained on how brands can streamline their customer care strategy to prepare for the holiday season surge: “Social media is quickly becoming the number one preferred channel of communication for customers and as we enter the holiday season, brands can expect to see 18 percent more social messages than last year. The growing number of customer care messages and requests across social platforms presents a unique challenge for consumer-facing brands.”
Businesses should take advantage of this says Gilpin: “ But it’s also a huge competitive opportunity for companies who rise to the occasion and use social media to provide quick, informed customer care. Social media also provides unique insights into brand performance and customer needs, organizations who leverage these insights will be able to build more proactive care strategies that go well beyond this holiday season.”
Cybersecurity
Jason Kent, Hacker in Residence, Cequence Security has explained how retail remains vulnerable from cyberattacks, especially demonstrating how “organizations that haven’t been hit by this type of attack before can overlook the potential risk and cite that it’s an end user’s responsibility to use more secure credentials.”
Kent recommends: “To improve security posture and prevent the risks of credential-stuffing attacks, organizations should keep in mind the four pillars of direction – credentials, tools, infrastructure and behaviour. Focusing on these key pillars can help organizations create applications that are less susceptible to automated attacks.”
Continuing this theme, Kenta adds: “Proper credentials encourage users to create unique identities for services, avoid easily guessable emails as usernames and never allow validating accounts without passwords. Proactively assessing and understanding attack tools is another essential step to remain vigilant as attackers adapt”
As a recommendation, Kent states: “ Organizations should also be aware of users’ computing environments, ensuring legitimate users are prioritized while securing the application from malicious connections. Lastly analysing design application behaviour to inform users without aiding attackers, avoids exposing sensitive information in error messages, and provides generic messages for failed actions while allowing support teams to monitor more detailed information if needed.”
Workforce planning Desmond Lim, co-founder, CEO, Workstream, a hiring platform and mobile app that connects job seekers to hourly positions looks at hiring patterns within the retail sector.
Lim observes: “As big-time retailers begin hiring hourly employees, it is critical they do so with efficiency. Employers must be able to anticipate the demand, award fair compensation, and maintain consistency outside of ‘crunch periods.’ Companies will want to ensure they keep a sustainable pace of hiring that supports them at peak periods but also supports the needs of hourly employees while they are working there,”
Lim finds, in relation to the forthcoming holiday season: “1 in 3 hourly workers will consider working a second job this holiday season on top of their existing full-time position to maximize their earnings for holiday expenses and gift-giving and holiday festivity expenses.”
