RetailSonar
Transforming Retail Strategies with Geo-Marketing and AI

The adoption of innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies into geo-marketing practices helps to enhance and scale location related decision making. This synergy between AI and location intelligence enables business leaders to drive strategic initiatives, including market growth, customer engagement, asset tracking, store location, and risk mitigation, among other crucial aspects.

RetailSonar, a leading geo-marketing company, has developed a revolutionary, user-friendly, and powerful platform equipped with an extensive amount of data and advanced predictive models powered by AI. Its main purpose is to assist organisations in conducting simulations and recognising potential opportunities for their businesses through the utilisation of location intelligence data and AI technology. This platform saves organisations time and resources by automating the process of market analysis and predictions, empowering them to stay ahead of the competition, drive growth, and maximise profitability.

“We empower large retail and service companies to make smarter decisions by leveraging location data and AI in optimising their retail network. Whether it’s opening new locations, closing underperforming ones, or enhancing the performance of existing stores, our solutions facilitate strategic investments for success,” says Dieter Debels, CEO of RetailSonar.

Every new customer can upload its sales data on the platform at aggregated level. This information is connected with the market data gathered by RetailSonar through smart data capturing from open sources. When all the data is collected, an AI model is built for the particular case, and customers can make simulations based on the AI model created for their organisation.

The web-based platform offers three distinct marketing and sales solutions. The first solution focuses on location planning to determine the most optimal places for opening or closing establishments, ensuring high profits with low operational expenses, playing a crucial role in maximising turnover for each location.

The second solution emphasises location performance analysis, identifying underperforming locations that have the potential to perform better.
Analysing data enables the marketing and sales departments to take targeted actions to help these locations grow towards their maximum potential, representing a more tactical approach to enhancing performance.

Lastly, the platform aims to provide marketing data to marketers, enabling them to implement targeted local marketing campaigns. With access to deep insights on the catchment area for each location, marketers can make informed decisions about actions like leaflet distribution, search engine advertising, social advertising, or digital campaigns with Google and Facebook.

Currently, RetailSonar has 150 large customers across various industries in Europe that use its solution, ranging from supermarkets and fashion stores to banks and EV charging operators. For traditional retailers facing pressures from e-commerce, inflation, and fluctuating interest rates, the company helps them adapt and optimise their operations to regain margins and ensure sustained profitability. In sectors like banking and interim offices, there’s a shift towards digitalisation. RetailSonar encourages businesses in these industries to reconsider the need for numerous physical branches. Its clientele includes renowned European industry leaders such as Action, Basic-Fit, CNR, LIDL, Sonova, Aldi, McDonald’s, and numerous others.

The company’s distinct strength lies in providing clients with the ability to simulate and predict the expected turnover for new store openings with an impressive 90 percent accuracy, including forecasting turnover for the location and predicting the future catchment area. This strategy is highly effective, allowing businesses to open profitable locations and also shut down underperforming ones, resulting in a significant decrease in customer churn by 50 percent. By precisely identifying potential customer losses, clients can proactively plan targeted market campaigns to limit risks, making a substantial impact on their overall success.

The solution also leverages intelligent data science processes to generate market insights, including footfall data and car passage data for each street segment, mapping local activity across every European country. This approach combines open data with information derived from mobile apps, offering detailed location data obtained from smartphone apps. The rich dataset serves as the fuel for its powerful AI solutions, enabling RetailSonar to develop accurate and robust tools based on the comprehensive dataset.

RetailSonar operates from its four strategically positioned offices in Belgium, The Netherlands, France and Germany, allowing effective distribution throughout the European market. With operational customers and applications spanning over 16 countries, RetailSonar plays a crucial role as the guiding force for companies, helping them translate their strategies into actionable plans and ensuring the best return on investment for all their decisions.