4 Innovative PxM Best Practices from Smart Brands and Retailers

Last Published: Mar 11, 2024 |
Antonia Renner
Antonia Renner

Sr. Principal Solutions Marketing Manager

In a recent Product Experience Management (PxM) blog, I discussed how PxM relates to Product Information Management (PIM) and Master Data Management (MDM), and how it can drive success in digital marketing and ecommerce. In this blog, I will share some innovative best practices from smart brands that use PxM for increased customer engagement, loyalty, and sales.

1. PUMA: Combining Interactive Digital and Instore Product Experiences

Perhaps more than any other segment, fashion and luxury goods brands understand that they cannot rely exclusively on creating engaging online experiences. To enrich the direct-to-consumer relationship, they typically combine their digital efforts with dynamic in-store product experiences.

By bringing interactive digital product experiences to life in its New York City flagship store, sportswear brand PUMA gives customers access to dynamic experiences—they can customize and personalize PUMA footwear, apparel, and accessories and create their own shopping experience in tech-driven engagement zones.

Puma brings interactive digital product experiences

Customers can view products in alternate colors and styles through augmented reality (AR) mirrors placed strategically throughout the store. Fed with trusted product content, the intelligent mirror can bring up alternative selections, all based on the item the consumer tries on. Consumers can also press a button to notify an associate if they need help at the mirror or to sign up for in-store events..

The successful use of AR or Internet-of-Things (IoT) in retail stores relies more than ever on trusted and rich product content to fuel next-gen omnichannel product experiences.

2. Ray-Ban: Re-inventing the e-commerce shopping experience with Product Customization

Sellers and brands alike are discovering the benefits and value of product customization. The personalization of items and services is a great way to enhance customer loyalty and engagement. According to a recent Deloitte study, 36% of consumers are interested in purchasing personalized products or services.

Luxottica, the world's largest eyewear company (and designer of Ray-Ban), offers a smart online eyewear customization tool to deliver innovative customization experience, right down to the smallest product details. Leveraging PxM can be a way to provide customers a simple and fun way to create a personal style that is both unique and recognizable. After choosing their model, consumers can add their favorite lenses - in some countries even progressive lenses featuring the Ray-Ban logo, and a personalized engraving (art engraving). Cases can also be customized with an engraving of your choice—a name or a message of love or best wishes.

3. Unilever: Gaining Consumer Trust through enhanced Supply Chain Transparency

Today’s consumers expect more supply chain transparency, more sustainability, and more information about the things they buy. That’s why the best product experiences rely on trusted data from and about the suppliers, sources, or ingredients of the product they buy. However, many organization even struggle to access a trusted 360-degree view of their suppliers and sub-suppliers.

Leading CPG brand manufacturer Unilever has a transparency initiative to provide people with access to information which goes beyond the label and regulatory requirements providing in-depth product and ingredient information online.

As one of the world’s largest buyers and sellers of tea, Unilever has also publicly published a full list of its global tea suppliers for the first time, along with a new interactive map to help customers understand its supply chain processes. Supply chain transparency allows all their consumers to understand where their tea comes from and deliver a trustful product experience.

4. Amazon: Contextually relevant and personalized Digital Product Content and Marketing

The opportunity to contextualize product content for targeted marketing and sales campaigns is huge and will continue to increase. All while respecting the consent of their customers, brands and retailers can contextualize and personalize product recommendations, search results and notifications using machine learning (ML) techniques.

One of the most well-known examples for contextually relevant, and personalized product content is Amazon. With a huge amount of data at their disposal, actionable insights, behavioral targeting, predictive modelling and personalization, and powerful algorithms, Amazon is able to deliver dynamic, data-powered messaging in real-time - from personalized onsite content to personalized emails and offers.

It’s not only about sending an email with products you’d searched for or placed in your basket. Amazon also personalizes your homepage, and also tailors product recommendations based on your search- and purchase history or habits. And this pays out: 44% of customers buy from Amazon’s product recommendations.

No surprise that the e-commerce giant has overtaken Google and become the default place for product searches, with about 54% of product searches beginning on Amazon.

To compete with Amazon, PUMA, Ray-Ban, Unilever and Co., retailers and brands must take PxM—including personalized product content, digital in-store experiences, supply chain transparency, and product customization—to a whole new level. They need to invest in new and future-ready technologies, supporting ML, Artificial Intelligence, AR, analytics, and more. And they’ll need to fuel those next-gen product experiences with trusted and relevant product, supplier and customer master data.

Learn more about how our retail solutions can help you leverage data for transformative customer experiences here. And discover how you can deliver exceptional customer experiences with master data-fueled product information management here.

Want to learn more about digital commerce platforms and supplier relationship management? Then register for our Digital Commerce and Supply Chain Summit.

First Published: Nov 21, 2019