S Group utilizes offline sales to drive online review volume across retail brands

S Group utilizes offline sales to drive online review volume across multiple retail brands

As a co-operative, S Group has a very unique business offering, where over 85% of sales are made by loyalty card holders. S Group members (loyalty card holders) benefit from receiving up to 5% money back on all of their monthly purchases, which encourages members to shop within stores and outlets within the S Group. The S Group operates a multitude of different offerings, including; hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounters, department stores, petrol stations, retail bank and much more.

Once someone makes a purchase with the S Group, whether that is offline or online, all of their loyalty card data is stored in the system. If someone makes a purchase offline, they scan their loyalty card to ensure they get their purchase registered. If they make a purchase online, they have to login to ensure their purchases are stored within the loyalty program.

“This puts S Group in the fortunate position of having access to huge volumes of loyalty card data, detailing how, when and where people shop. It allows us to tailor our solution to ensure that customers receive the best possible products and services,” said Harri Laaksonen, eCommerce Development Manager

Linking S Group’s offline sales data to online sales

SOK’s main reason for partnering with Bazaarvoice was for the unique combination of technology, client service and moderation, allowing them to come up with a tailored approach to offer a similar customer journey both from online and offline.

“We know that customers who buy a lot online also buy a lot offline. Multichannel customers turn out to be the most profitable ones.” said Laaksonen.

Analyzing the data from the reviews, Bazaarvoice was able to connect their offline sales data with the online conversion data to highlight the impact that ratings and reviews were driving.
17% of all Sokos department stores’ revenue purchases in-store are influenced by reviews, as are 1% of all revenue purchased online (2019 data). For every 1€ spent online that is influenced by reviews, another 17€ of instore revenue can be attributed to Ratings & Reviews.

“One of our main reasons for partnering with Bazaarvoice is that they had the best technology, from analytics, to moderations and customer service – the whole package. We knew we needed a unique set up, so we only wanted to work with the best,” said Laaksonen.

Fresh content improves SEO

Marrying the online and offline data also allowed for a holistic view on product performance, answering questions such as: were they stocking the right products, did the products perform as described on the website, should there be additional details about the products on their websites etc. Using Bazaarvoice’s analytics and reporting offerings made it easy then to escalate product feedback through the business and embed customer voice within their decision-making process.

Not only did SOK improve the existing customer journey, leveraging deep product insights and shoppers’ feedback, the fresh content being posted on the website daily also boosted their search visibility attracting more customers to the website.

“Collecting reviews has ensured that we have fresh consumer content on our site daily, increasing our visibility in google,” said Laaksonen.