Most retailers can see whether their own stores got busier or quieter. What they rarely see is the market around them: which competitors won the visits they lost, which shoppers moved, and in which regions. Accurat fills that gap with anonymised, aggregated location data that covers both a retailer's own stores and those of its competitors.
The result is not a single dashboard but a chain of questions. Each answer narrows the next one down, until a market trend becomes a concrete campaign. This article walks through that chain step by step.
Step 1: Measure where you stand
The first question is simple: what is the current situation? Accurat answers it with share of visits (SoV), the part of all visits in a market segment that goes to each retailer.
Share of visits only becomes meaningful over a clearly defined period and in its evolution. A retailer that holds 12% of visits sounds stable, until the same period last year shows 14%. That is why Accurat always compares like with like: the same weeks, the same set of competitors, the same region.
This first step tells a retailer whether it is winning or losing ground, and since when. It does not yet tell it why.
Step 2: Explain what drives the change
The second question is what drives this change? Accurat answers it with the Actionability Matrix, which breaks share of visits down into its two drivers:
- Fraction of Visitors: the share of market shoppers who visit a retailer's stores;
- Average Frequency: how often those shoppers visit.
The link between them is direct:
Share of Visits = Fraction of Visitors × Average Frequency
A retailer can therefore grow by reaching more shoppers, by getting them to come back more often, or both. Plotting the change in each driver gives four quadrants, and each one points to a different priority:
- Strong performance: reach and frequency both grow. Scale what works and watch competitors.
- Frequency decline: more shoppers, but they return less often. Acquisition works; retention needs attention.
- Fraction decline: loyal shoppers, but fewer of them. The challenge is acquisition, not loyalty.
- At risk: both drivers decline. This is the most urgent position, especially when share of visits falls too.
The matrix is always read together with share of visits. A retailer can grow on both drivers and still lose share when competitors grow faster. Visit transfer then shows which competitors those visits went to, and from whom the retailer won new ones.
Two retailers can lose the same share of visits for opposite reasons. One still sees its shoppers as often as before, but fewer shoppers come: that is an acquisition challenge. The other still reaches as many shoppers, but they return less often: that is a retention challenge. Same number, very different briefs.
Step 3: Recommend where, who and when
Knowing the driver is not yet enough to act. A retailer still needs to know where to focus, which shoppers to address and at what moment. Accurat answers three further questions.
Where is this change? National averages hide regional stories. A retailer may grow strongly in one region while losing reach in its traditional strongholds. Accurat zooms in from country to region and city, so each area gets its own diagnosis: scale what works, win back lapsed shoppers, or take a closer look.
Who is impacted? Accurat profiles the shoppers behind a shift: which audiences visit less, which ones are new, and which other retailers they combine their visits with. That shows whether a retailer is losing households with children, one-person households or shoppers from a particular social class, and which competitors they already know as an alternative.
When was it generated? Timing links a shift to its cause. Accurat looks at the weeks, days and periods in which visits moved, and connects them to seasonal peaks, promotions, store openings or closures, and the wider economic context.
Together, these answers turn a market trend into a target: this audience, in these locations, at this moment.
Step 4: Activate with campaigns
The final step is taking action. The where, who and when from the previous step become the brief for a drive-to-store campaign: the right audience, near the right stores, at the right time.
For a retailer with an acquisition problem, that means reaching lapsed families in the regions where reach fell most. For a retailer with a retention problem, it means giving existing shoppers a reason to come back, for example with promotions timed around their weekly grocery trips.
Accurat then measures the impact. It compares shoppers who were exposed to the campaign with a control group who were not, and attributes the difference in store visits to the campaign. The outcome is not how many people saw it, but how many additional visits it generated.
Every campaign feeds the next measurement
The path does not end with a campaign. Its results flow straight back into the first step. Did share of visits recover? Did reach grow among the targeted families? Were visits won back from the competitor that had taken them?
Because Accurat's data is updated daily, retailers do not have to wait for a quarterly report to find out. Each cycle sharpens the picture of the market, and each new campaign starts from a better baseline than the last.
What this means for retailers
Three principles sum up how Accurat works with retailers:
- A number is only the start. Share of visits shows whether a retailer is winning or losing, but the drivers behind it (reach, frequency and visit transfer) decide what to do about it.
- The answer is rarely national. Regions, audiences and moments each tell their own story, and the right action differs between them.
- Action needs proof. Drive-to-store campaigns are measured in additional store visits, and those results feed the next round of insight.
Know. Understand. Dig deeper. Take action. Four steps that take a retailer from a market figure to a campaign that brings shoppers through the door.