Whether it is Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store (BOPIS), delivery or ship from a warehouse, when compared to traditional in-store purchases, digital journeys can incur a significant margin loss. This is due to the additional costs of fulfillment, whether it be packing, shipping, or storage. On average, retailers lose 3-8 margin points when consumers leverage one of these digital journeys to complete a purchase.

The initial challenge retailers face when it comes to stopping margin erosion is figuring out how to begin. Retail companies are often data rich but decision poor, storing massive amounts of information about their stores, employees, and inventory but lacking the ability to interpret their data and transform it into actionable insights.  That is what this research paper is about.

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