Do regional grocers have any advantage over national chains in leveraging data on a localized basis?

Interactive Edge’s CEO, Zel Bianco comments:

Mining customer data has become critical for all shopping so why not in groceries? Eating is something we do every day. The real question will be, how do the majority of retailers compete with what Tesco, Kroger and Walmart have spent on this? Even Kroger, as stated in the Wall Street Journal article, is feeling the bite from what they spent on hiring data scientists, engineers and app developers. They are expensive and can speak firsthand to that fact.

Regional grocers will need to truly focus on their customers more than ever before but I think it will be impossible to do that without being able to effectively and accurately analyze and take action on their data quickly.

Customer data is grocery’s new battleground