Data Sharing = Data Caring?

While governments have made significant strides in regulating data usage and cracking down on bad actors who misuse data without transparency or consent, businesses also have a critical role to play. We need to be more transparent, responsible, and considerate when it comes to data sharing – not just for consumers (B2C) but also for businesses (B2B).

Yet, let’s not forget that sharing, analyzing, and processing data presents huge opportunities for all stakeholders. When done right, data sharing empowers businesses to create better products, deliver more personalized services, and make marketing more relevant – moving away from the old “spray and pray” tactics. Importantly, it also eliminates inefficiencies, reduces waste, and ensures resources are allocated toward what customers genuinely want and need. At the end of the day, everyone benefits – as long as we strike the right balance between responsible use and irresponsible abuse of data.

So, how can businesses achieve this balance? Let’s break it down by exploring the advantages and challenges of data sharing for both B2C and B2B contexts.

B2C Data Sharing: The Promise and the Peril

Advantages for Consumers

1. Hyper-Personalization: When businesses have access to consumer data, they can deliver tailored offers, promotions, and services that resonate with individual preferences. For instance, instead of receiving generic marketing emails, consumers might get personalized recommendations based on their shopping habits or loyalty program participation.
2. Better Products and Services: Data allows companies to understand what consumers truly want. This means fewer irrelevant products and more focus on creating high-demand, high-quality offerings.
3. Reduced Waste and Smarter Inventory Management: In fast-paced industries like fashion, where trends and seasons shift rapidly, success hinges not only on creating great designs but also on ensuring the right quantities, colors, and sizes are available in the right locations at the right time. By leveraging advanced customer analytics, brands can accurately forecast demand for specific products at each location, significantly reducing overproduction, logistics inefficiencies, and waste, while optimizing costs.
4. Convenience and Efficiency: Sharing data enables seamless experiences. Think about how retailers use purchase history to enable one-click reorders or how apps leverage location data to provide real-time updates on nearby stores.
5. Transparency and Control: Responsible businesses are now empowering consumers by giving them clear choices about what data to share, how it’s used, and how it benefits them.
6. Transparent Value Exchange: Loyalty programs offer a powerful way to create a mutual value exchange between businesses and consumers. When consumers join a program, there is a clear and explicit agreement: They share certain data about their preferences and behaviors in return for tangible benefits, such as improved service, personalized offers, and exclusive discounts. This transparency fosters trust and ensures both parties gain value from the relationship.

Challenges for Consumers

1. Privacy Concerns: Despite advancements in regulation, many consumers still worry about how their data is used. Concerns around data breaches, misuse, and surveillance continue to impact customers perspectives.
2. Over-Targeting: While personalization is a benefit, it can sometimes cross the line into intrusiveness. No one wants to feel like they’re being watched 24/7.
3. Lack of Understanding: Many consumers still don’t fully understand the implications of data sharing, leading to mistrust. Transparency and education are key to addressing this.

B2B Data Sharing: A World of Opportunity

While B2C data sharing gets most of the attention, B2B data sharing holds immense untapped potential. At Coniq, we’ve seen how collaborative data-sharing initiatives can foster innovation, improve margins, and unlock new revenue streams for both retailers and their brand partners. Coniq has been leading this approach for almost 15 years in the mall sector.

Advantages for Businesses

1. Improved Collaboration: Data sharing fosters stronger relationships between businesses. For example, retailers and brands can work together to analyze sales performance, optimize inventory management, and understand customer preferences.
2. Accurate Demand Forecasting: By pooling data, businesses can gain a more accurate picture of market trends and consumer behavior, leading to smarter production and distribution decisions.
3. Enhanced Marketing Effectiveness: Collaborative data sharing enables businesses to measure the success of advertising campaigns and promotions more effectively. It also opens the door to co-branded campaigns that drive mutual success.
4. New Revenue Streams: Retailers can create and monetize new data products, such as insights on category sales or branch performance, providing brands with valuable intelligence.
5. Loyalty Programs as Data Catalysts: Loyalty programs are essential for unlocking the potential of data. By implementing thoughtfully designed programs, mall operators can connect consumers with all their favorite brands through a single, integrated platform, creating a seamless and engaging experience.
6. Driving Shared Value Through Loyalty: Similar to providing a centralized physical shopping destination, loyalty programs unify consumer interactions, simplifying the process of gathering and sharing valuable insights with participating brands. These insights empower brands to improve their offerings, while the resulting value is returned to shoppers in the form of rewards, discounts, and exclusive perks. This creates a mutually beneficial ecosystem for consumers, brands, and mall operators alike.

Challenges for Businesses

1. Trust and Security: Businesses need to trust that their partners will handle shared data responsibly and securely. Without robust agreements and safeguards, data sharing can feel risky.
2. Technical Barriers: Sharing insights requires the right platforms and tools to analyze and process data effectively. Without the right technology, businesses may struggle to unlock the full potential of shared data. This underscores the importance of partnering with a reliable technology provider who can centralize and manage data within a secure, scalable platform, ensuring seamless and efficient utilization.
3. Competition Concerns: In some cases, businesses may be hesitant to share data for fear of giving competitors an edge. This highlights the importance of clear boundaries and mutual benefits in data-sharing agreements.

The Role of Technology: Unlocking the Power of Data Sharing

One of the biggest enablers of effective data sharing is technology. At Coniq, we’ve developed a platform to help businesses maximize the value of their data partnerships. For example, our tenant reports provide retailers with detailed insights into sales performance, product trends, and customer demographics. This not only helps individual retailers but also opens up opportunities for collaboration with other brand partners.

Some of the key benefits of advanced technology in data sharing include:

• Granular Insights: Technology allows businesses to delve deeper into data sets, uncovering insights like category performance, conversion rates, and customer journey patterns.
• Improved Decision-Making: With real-time analytics, businesses can make faster, more informed decisions.
• Streamlined Collaboration: Platforms like ours make it easier for retailers and brands to share data in a secure, organized way, ensuring everyone benefits.

Striking the Right Balance: Responsible Data Sharing

As businesses, we have a responsibility to treat data with care and respect. Here are some guiding principles for responsible data sharing:

1. Be Transparent: Clearly communicate to consumers and business partners how their data will be used and what benefits they’ll receive in return.
2. Give Control: Empower data owners (whether individuals or businesses) to make informed decisions about what data they share.
3. Ensure Security: Invest in robust data security measures to protect shared information from breaches or misuse.
4. Focus on Value: Use data to deliver tangible benefits – whether it’s a personalized customer experience, a more efficient supply chain, or a smarter marketing campaign.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Data Sharing

At Coniq, we believe that the potential of data sharing is still largely untapped – especially in the B2B space. By fostering collaboration and leveraging collective intelligence, businesses can achieve remarkable results. Some possibilities include:

• Co-Branded Marketing Campaigns: By pooling data, retailers and brands can create targeted campaigns that drive engagement and sales.
• New Product Development: Shared insights are a powerful driver of innovation, enabling the creation of products that align closely with market demands. Loyalty programs play a pivotal role as the mechanism that brings this process to life. By seamlessly integrating B2C and B2B data sharing in an open and transparent manner, loyalty programs facilitate collaboration and ensure the value generated from these insights is shared across all stakeholders.
• Sustainability Gains: Data sharing can reduce waste by enabling more accurate demand forecasting and inventory management.

The key is to approach data sharing with the mindset of a partnership. When businesses and consumers work together – sharing data in a responsible, transparent way – everyone wins.

So, is data sharing the same as data caring? It can be, but it’s up to us as businesses to prove it. By prioritizing transparency, trust, and technology, we can unlock the full potential of data sharing while earning the confidence of consumers and partners alike.

Ben Chesser

Ben Chesser is the CEO & Founder of CONIQ

www.coniq.com