An extended view of how we helped ASICS gain unique product and customer intelligence.
An extended view of how we helped ASICS gain unique product and customer intelligence.
For many retailers, getting actionable insights from customer and product data is a massive roadblock to growth.
ASICS, the sports fashion brand founded in Japan, faced a similar problem.
Since 2017, ASICS has partnered with Crobox.
Our goal?
Creating data-driven customer profiles to facilitate customer-centric product experiences on-site.
This article will show you what we did and how we did it.
“In the past years, we’ve been trying to come closer to the competition, playing catch-up. But now we can do something different, and that’s where Crobox will help us stand out.” (Rick Hoving, Senior eCommerce Manager at ASICS)
ASICS stands for anima sana in corpore sano: the brand’s founding philosophy and mission. Translated this means, “healthy soul in a healthy body” and echoes their Japanese roots.
They seek to be a champion in the sports fashion market and are a consistent favorite amongst athletes and amateurs alike.
ASICS promotes a human-centric approach to sports science. They reinvent products to fit each sport and movement.
With their sustainable growth goals and caregiver mindset, ASICS will rapidly become the consumer’s first choice.
eCommerce departments rely on data but are often unable to use it to its full potential. For ASICS, this was a problem when the company shifted from pushing products to creating customer-centric experiences.
Due to a lack of resources, the eCommerce team struggled to dive into customer data.
Another challenge was promoting product attributes in the right way. ASICS running shoes have the best technology on the market, yet their Japanese ethos means that they don’t shout about it.
The challenge was finding a solution that would show these attributes in a subtle yet impactful way.
Crobox rolled out Dynamic Messages on ASICS’ product lister, product detail, and checkout pages.
Our Dynamic Messages are AI driven product badges and notifications.
This case study will cover our Dynamic Badge implementations.
These include:
1. Behavioral nudges: We determined which message was the most effective on a product and segment level.
2. Product attributes: We determined which product qualities should be pushed where.
3. Shoe Finder: With the help of Crobox, ASICS was also able to optimize their Shoe Finder with more hyper-targeted personalization on-site.
Let's take a closer look.
“When you implement psychology on eCommerce and it works, that’s a double win.” (Rick Hoving, Senior eCommerce Manager at ASICS)
Understanding what messages appeal to webshop visitors is important in determining their psychographic profiles.
So with a message like “bestseller”, our behavioral science insights team can make the psychological assumptions that people who click on bestselling shoes respond to Social Proof.
For more about psychological messages in eCommerce, read this post.
By testing different behavioral messages as badges on the ASICS site, we found nuances in responses from different countries.
These differences were measured by comparing relative conversion rates for people who were shown messages and people who weren't.
In short,
Understanding people’s psychological makeup and then grouping them accordingly is part of psychographic segmentation.
For more on psychographics, read this post on how to start your own psychographic marketing.
So what did our tests reveal?
*Some data values are left out of this graphic to preserve data privacy
Our experiments found that the best performing message for all three active countries (the UK, France, and Germany) was “Award Winner”.
What does this mean?
Well, this confirms that people shop with ASICS because of their authority as a premium brand.
ASICS shoppers, therefore, respond to Authority and trust the brand as a leader in the running shoe market.
Despite “Award Winner” being on average the top-performing message across all European markets with Crobox experiments, each country had a different preferred product attribute.
For German shoppers, “Waterproof” had a CR uplift of 66.62%. Whereas France saw “High Comfort” as most important, with an uplift of 36.18%, Great Britain shoppers liked the shoes’ “Lightweight” qualities (+61% uplift).
Although these are small nudges, the nuances in what people love about ASICS products is important data that can be further reused to optimize local campaigns.
For example,
German shoppers who value waterproof qualities can be upsold with recommended waterproof products.
Or French shoppers can be delivered with high comfort product recommendations on-site.
This is valuable customer intelligence that can be reused for localized omnichannel campaigns.
Which brings us to our product attributes testing.
By testing product attributes on-site, we also determined which messages worked best for their best and worst-performing products (in terms of revenue).
For example, ASICS’ most sold product is their “champion” shoe: GEL-KAYANO.
The product badge “Award Winner” on this shoe had a CR uplift of 78.52%.
“We Recommend” (CR uplift 73.63%), and “Bestseller” (CR uplift 68.83%) were equally high-performing messages.
This means that customers were converting more if the shoe displayed a Social Proof or Authority product badge on the PLP.
GEL-KAYANO
From this data, it can be inferred what kinds of qualities should be pushed in future campaigns (and which ones should be avoided).
This is Product Intelligence in action.
Before, ASICS didn’t segment their email campaigns.
But with this data, they can now improve the way they communicate with their customers.
For their champion shoe to keep succeeding, ASICS can act on these product insights by applying them to campaigns.
We recommended pushing Authority and then Social Proof in their messaging strategy.
This created product-driven customer experiences both on-site and across their marketing channels.
“We want to talk about how a product is good for you specifically and your goals. Rather than just shove you a shoe and sell you a product.” (Rick Hoving, Senior eCommerce Manager at ASICS)
In line with their customer-centric direction, ASICS implemented their Win the Wall in-store project helping customers find their perfect running shoe.
This “guided experience” was then recreated on-site in the form of a quiz wizard to help customers find the shoes that would help them accomplish their goals.
The on-site Shoe Finder quiz wizard, recreating the guided in-store experience to find the perfect shoe that fits the customers' needs.
We helped ASICS take this Shoe Finder quiz wizard to the next level by adding:
1. A carousel with Shoe Finder options as product recommendations
Shoe Finder carousel as recommendation engine (sticky overlay) using data from quiz results.
2. A Shoe Finder profile that customers could downloaded
ASICS fit profile (lightbox overlay) that customers could download using data from Shoe Finder quiz results.
3. Shoe Finder retargeted product badges
Product badges on the PLP showing which shoes fit the Shoe Finder quiz results (static overlay).
These personalization features improved the ASICS customer experience while helping them gain valuable data for their omnichannel marketing strategy.
What did these optimizations achieve?
From these implementations, ASICS created data-driven segmentation for further targeting.
Our data enriched ASICS’ existing customer profiles and improved their omnichannel strategy.
*Some data values are left out of this graphic to preserve data privacy
ASICS found that the customers going through the Shoe Finder with the highest CR of 4.10% were:
This segment can be delivered content that doesn’t only promote the products that fit best with their goals but also the lifestyle around them.
For example, they can receive tips and tricks to run further like nutrition recommendations or training programs.
On the other hand, another segment with a CR of 3.23% were:
By adding assumptions about this segment from their product choices or shopping profile, it could be inferred that this segment are marathon runners.
If this is an accurate, data-backed assumption, then ASICS is able to deliver relevant information on local marathons, recommend optimal products for marathons, or deliver information about how to protect the body when undergoing such an athletic challenge.
These different segments show what qualities customers look for in products when making purchase decisions, and what lifestyles they lead that brought them to make these purchases in the first place.
Remember your psychographic profiles!
Understanding why people buy, and how they make decisions, is key to creating data-driven customer profiles.
These data-backed assumptions help to strengthen the relationship between ASICS and their shoppers.
The Shoe Finder generated at 1.61% AOV overall uplift, with a CR uplift of +53.80%!
ASICS will expand these experiments into their European markets.
These product and customer intelligence will be reused in-store, on-site, and to optimize email campaigns.
In doing so, customer experiences will be streamlined and personalized omnichannel.
Crobox will enrich ASICS data sets, optimize the on-site experience, and continue to leverage data for customer features like in our Shoe Finder collaboration.
Get in touch if you want a similar experience!
