Corner the market: brick-and-mortar retailers moving into digital spaces.

• Author: Sutherland, Spencer
• Position: Business Trends

Remember when choosing where to hop just meant finding the store closest to your house?

Oh, how times have changed. There are now more than 110 million smartphone users in the United States, who all have the ability to purchase any product, at any time of the day, from anywhere in the world. To keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of mobile purchasing, Utah retailers are ramping up their digital sales tools.

"Twenty or 25 years ago, there was the idea of marketing to large groups of people," says Dave Davis, president of the Utah Retail Merchants Association. "Technology has provided the ability to create a market of one, where each of us becomes our own unique and individual market. The technology gives the retailer the ability to market directly to you."

Davis says that many Utah retailers are using the data they collect about their consumers to give them a more personalized shopping experience. Under the old model, Davis explains, a company would distribute the same message to all of its clients. But by tracking a customer's purchasing history, retailers can push more targeted advertising.

"I don't have to get coupons for brussels sprouts from the grocery store anymore. They know I hate brussels sprouts because I never buy them. And we're now seeing this model across all types of industries," says Davis.

The Customer is Always Right

Speaking of grocery stores, Associated Food Stores--the grocery cooperative that owns Macey's, Dick's Market, Dan's, Lin's and Fresh Market--is one Utah company that is fully embracing the new digital model. Taken as a whole, the company's new approach represents a sweeping change in its marketing strategy. Each of its individual parts, however, is built on a simple principle--giving customers what they want.

The company started with its website. Using the Macey's brand as a testing ground, it launched a completely overhauled site. "As you can imagine, most grocery websites are pretty static and out of date says Associated Foods Retail Marketing Director Jason SokoL "We created the Macey's site on a blog platform so we can easily update the content and make it more relevant to our customers."

Associated Foods has also gone social. It's not just using its Facebook page as an online customer suggestion box, but as a crowdsourcing tool--recently asking followers to weigh on new designs for donut boxes.

Associated Foods also has more dramatic digital plans up its sleeves. The company will soon implement...