Forum Discussion
MicrosoftDriving Retail Profitability with Location + Weather Intelligence
When predicting retail sales, models consider various data points including historical shopping trend data and influencers like economic indicators. In addition, shifting seasons can seriously affect retail sales. Consumers change their buying habits when temperatures spike or drop. The food we eat, the clothes we wear and a lot more can be determined by fluctuations in the weather. According to the British Retail Consortium, Weather has the biggest influence on consumer behavior, after the economy. Some interesting insights:
- On wet or cold days there was a 12% increase in website traffic for retailers in the home & furniture, wholesale, and clothing verticals - compared to that on warm and sunny days.
- Experiments show consumers would willingly pay 37% more for green tea and 56% more for gym membership after being exposed to sunlight.
- If temperatures reach over 18 degrees in the UK, supermarkets know that there will be a 22% increase in fizzy drinks, 20% increase in juices, and 90% increase in garden furniture
- A 1-degree Fahrenheit drop in temperature in the US can lead to a huge increase in sales of soup, porridge, and lip-care products.
Retailers can use weather forecasting to guide inventory decisions while marketing can use it to drive personalized promotions & advertising.
For example, DressByWeather is a fun little site that provides clothing suggestions based on your current location’s weather report. It’s a great example of how retailers can tune their recommendations to weather forecasts. Home Depot is a great example of a retailer that uses Weather forecasts to optimize operations. Three days before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, the hardware retailer received an alert from a weather service and activated its disaster-response plan to get supplies to those in the storm’s path, while turning a profit, too. Here is an old infographic from Fortune Magazine detailing Home Depot’s disaster response plan. McDonald’s is tapping artificial intelligence to customize its outdoor digital menu displays to show food based on weather, time of day, current traffic and trending menu items.
Because Location & Weather Intelligence are key components for decision making, Azure Maps is proud to share, in partnership with AccuWeather, the preview of a new set of Weather Services for Azure customers to integrate into their applications. Azure Maps Weather Services adds a new layer of real-time, location-aware information to our portfolio of native Azure geospatial services powering Microsoft enterprise customer applications. Chris Pendleton, talks about the details of the new Weather Service in his blog post.
The Weather Service Preview is now available for use. You can find the documentation of the Weather Service API here. In addition you will also find a demo and sample code here.
Climate change & shifting seasons can seriously impact retailer performance. Consumer shopping habits fluctuate with the spike & drop of temperatures and preparing your business for the changing demands is essential. One of the best ways to do this is to combine Location Intelligence with Weather Intelligence.
Here are some useful Azure Maps resources:
• Overview of Azure Maps: https://azure.com/maps
• Weather services documentation: http://bit.ly/34iGe8R
• Getting Started with Azure Maps: https://aka.ms/AzureMapsGettingStarted
• Show weather overlays on a map code sample