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In-store, Online, or Both, With GS1 Standards, It’s Just Commerce

Consumers have changed the way they shop—are you ready?

 

Today’s consumers don’t shop online or in a store, they just shop. With click and collect, online shopping, social marketing, and traditional in-store brand experience immersion, the lines between the real and the virtual world are increasingly blurred.

Across channels, platforms, and devices, the GS1 System of Standards enable companies to speak the same language, connect with one another, and move their business forward to support any type of commerce via any sales channel, platform, or device. GS1 Standards drive commerce—no matter where the final transaction occurs.

How GS1 US Helps Supports Efficient Commerce Across All Sales Channels

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Organizations are leveraging GS1 Standards to focus their efforts on optimizing their consumers’ shopping experience and reinforcing their brand’s value propositions. They are able to:

  • Create and deliver reliable, accurate product information
  • Better match inventory with customer demand for greater visibility
  • Make product information search engine friendly
  • Reduce confusion from counterfeit products
  • Understand their customers through smarter analytics

Create and Deliver Reliable, Accurate Product Information

90% of shoppers use their phones for pre-shopping activities infographic

Product information must be accurate, consistent, and persistent throughout the consumer’s experience regardless of where the final transaction occurs.

Retailers and brand owners must find new ways to differentiate themselves and their products with tech-savvy consumers by delivering trusted, accurate product data. Apps that display local search results, social media sites linking products to comments and reviews, and barcode scanning apps all need a way to ensure that their digital product

The GS1 Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®) is used to accurately identify products globally. The GTIN is an essential component of data validation. It is the key to accurate/authentic product data; it helps align the product’s physical with the digital “shelf” data and streamlines the sharing of said data with retail/e-tail partners. Further, assigning a GS1 GTIN to every product helps retailers, marketplaces, and brands offer consumers a consistent search, discovery, and purchase experience. Read the GTIN Adoption and Usage Model– an Implementation Roadmap for the U.S. Retail Supply Chain

Better Match Inventory With Customer Demand for Greater Visibility

84% of smartphone shoppers use their device to help shop in store infographic

Products meet consumers. It’s more important than ever to have the right product, in the right location, at the right time—and to implement new technology the right way. Retailers and brands are looking for new ways to help them forecast trends more accurately, collaborate with global trading partners more efficiently, and improve inventory management. As omni-channel increasingly defines the future of retail, businesses are finding they must adopt new standards and technologies or risk losing sales, their stores, and their customers. GS1 US® makes it possible.

Electronic Product Code (EPC®)-enabled item level Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology helps deliver the seamless shopping experience by taking item identification a step further—connecting the digital and physical worlds that consumers continue to straddle in their browsing and purchasing experiences. Further, without EPC-enabled RFID, a retailer may be able to sell an item online but may be unable to find the item and fulfill the order. RFID enables better “last item” visibility and the opportunity to sell that item at the best possible margin.

Make Product Information Search Engine Friendly

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Using the GS1 System—across brick and mortar and e-commerce channels—helps trading partners identify, capture, and share accurate product data attributes and images. Further, assigning a unique GS1 GTIN to every product helps retailers, marketplaces, and brands offer consumers a consistent search, discovery, and purchase experience. Finally, using EPC-enabled RFID technology helps retail trading partners to deliver true inventory visibility from source-to-store—enabling 95% tracking accuracy* for every piece of merchandise, in every retail stock location. With this level of inventory intelligence, retailers and brands can respond quickly to optimize inventory location to maximize sales and provide the best consumer shopping experience.

*Auburn University RFID Lab Studies

Get noticed

For online products, the value of a search engine is like a display shelf in a physical store. How items are presented on that shelf influence if and how consumers see a product. When a search is poorly optimized, products have poor “digital shelf” positioning, which makes them more difficult to find, select, and/or purchase.

Regardless of channel, product information now influences an overwhelming majority of all shopping decisions. Yet, as physical audits (through GS1 US data quality pilots) show, overall data accuracy hovers around 50 percent. In the age of e-commerce, accurate data helps you and your supply chain to deliver the right product, to the right place, at the right time. To help organizations respond to increasing consumer and trading partner demands for complete, accurate, and timely product information, GS1 US developed the GS1 US National Data Quality Program.

Reduce Confusion From Counterfeit Products

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Sell more products by selling confidence. Counterfeiting is a growing problem worldwide. As counterfeiters become more and more sophisticated, so must the methods of detection in order to prevent these products from entering households. Further, if your customers can’t distinguish between your branded products and counterfeit knock-offs, they may lose trust, delay purchases, or even worse, they may spend money buying fake products they believe are yours.

GS1 Standards:

Today, EPC-enabled RFID tags are applied to physical products (those sold in stores or online). These Gen2v2 tags carry data that can be used to track and validate product authenticity in real time. As a result, retailers and marketplaces, can trace source materials back to their point of origin, thereby increasing their ability to audit/validate receipt of goods and make accurate, verified product information available to their e-commerce application—accessed by consumers. This combination of accurate product identification information, real-time inventory visibility, and trusted product data provides consumers with the visibility and confidence they need to make their purchase decision.

Understand Your Customers Through Smarter Analytics

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Knowing your customer is the best way to give them exactly what they want. The ability to leverage their digital activity data—e.g., tracking their shopping patterns or customer loyalty programs—can help you determine future purchase habits and potentially give you an advantage in the marketplace. But having access to that data is not enough. In fact, most companies can’t effectively use the data they capture. Analytics depend on quality data and product attributes being accurate, complete, and up to date. Many businesses simply don't have the collaboration and information sharing architecture in place to move forward.

GS1 Standards can help businesses:

  • Leverage their existing investments in sharing quality data and then extend their accurate, consistent product information to their e-commerce channel to enable better analytics
  • Better identify, capture, and share attributed customer and supply chain data to help determine the path-to-purchase, replenishment planning, and trading partner performance
  • Understand their customers to create individualized personal shopping experiences (based on the information they provide via their online profiles)  

With GS1 US, It’s Just Commerce®

Regardless of channel or medium, GS1 US knows that trusted product content helps drive a trusted discovery and purchase experience.

Reliable and accurate product information helps allows you to grow your business in other ways including reducing operational costs, leveraging consumer insights, and growing sales.

GS1 Standards help you give your consumers the dependable and seamless commerce experience they demand.

 

GS1 US EPC Item Level Readiness Program

Develop and execute a successful EPC/RFID Implementation program leveraging this self-paced interactive nine-step deployment tool.

Go to GS1 US EPC Item Level Readiness page >