The Marketing & Customer Experience service line focuses on helping retailers capture and apply deep customer insights to strengthen their brands, build customer loyalty, and make smarter marketing investment decisions. We also help our clients build organizations better positioned to meet the needs of their target customers.

Strong Brands, Integrated Solutions
McKinsey's Retail Practice works with clients to build shareholder value by strengthening their brands. Working with McKinsey's Branding group, we develop integrated branding solutions firmly grounded in customer needs as well as in the retailer's overall business strategy. As part of this process, we also work with multi-format retailers and apparel manufacturers to adopt a portfolio approach to managing their brands.

Building Loyalty
We recognize that it takes much more than a frequent shopper card to build customer loyalty. In collaboration with McKinsey's Consumer Lifecycle Management group, we have conducted extensive research into the underlying forces that influence customer loyalty. Based on insights into specific loyalty profiles, we work with clients to design and execute loyalty programs that truly strengthen customer relationships. Moreover, we help retailers leverage the rich data available from their loyalty programs to make better product, pricing, and promotions decisions.

Smarter Decisions
Increasingly, retail CEOs are demanding that marketing executives do more with less. This requires new approaches that manage marketing spending as both a cost and an investment. We help clients implement approaches from our Purchasing & Supply Management group to identify cost-improvement opportunities. On the investment side, we help clients focus on customers with the most economic potential, using the most effective messages. In our experience, up to half of a retailer's marketing budget can be reallocated to higher-return activities, leading to an average 10 to 15 percent increase in revenue.

Organizing Around the Customer
For many retailers, placing the customer at the center of key business decisions represents a fundamental shift from their traditional management approach. We work with our clients to put in place the processes, structures, and capabilities that will enable them to become truly customer-centric organizations.