GDPR Countdown – The Retail View

Editor’s Note:

There are less than six months until the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect on May 25, 2018. Continuing our series of blogs exploring GDPR’s impact on various industries and digital identity, Doug Norton-Bilsby, VP, Retail and CPG provides his perspective on how the regulation will impact retailers.  

GDPR will Revolutionize Retail

Preparations for GDPR have certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons in the Retail industry. For a business segment which has predominately had free reign to collect and utilize customer data in such an all encompassing way to target, re-target, ad serve, process, segment and personalize shopping experiences with only a passing nod to consumer consent; retailers are having to fundamentally rethink their approach to what gaining customer trust actually entails.

GDPR has caused retailers to not only reconsider their marketing practices, but also start to address and converge the operational silos through which they engage their consumers. Smart retailers who see the value that GDPR brings both to them and their consumers are putting in place a single view of customer identity and centralizing profile management and consent to eradicate duplication of customer records. There’s no better way to provide a transparent view of what data about the customer is being collected and how its being used. For those slower off the mark, looking to only do the bare minimum or organizations who consider GDPR as a compliance distraction, aside from the regulator’s magnifying glass on them, I’d expect consumer dissidence or activism to be their main issues post May 2018 and only then will they see the true business impact.