Crowdsourcing in Retail: All You Need to Know

Crowdsourcing is a process through which a large number of people extend their support to a particular endeavor, project, or business through finances, ideas, and tasks. The diverse group of participants involved with crowdsourcing may be paid or unpaid and usually get together through various internet channels and platforms.
The contribution made by each participant in a crowdsourcing project could be freelance work, innovative ideas, information, or monetary support. In return for the contributions, participants may be paid, unpaid, or given access to a service or monetary gain of equivalent value.

Retail businesses can use crowdsourcing solutions for retailers to source various services, including on-demand workforce, financial assistance, product design and development, marketplace solutions, technical assistance, and delivery services. Crowdsourcing has a wide range of applications for retail businesses, and when used effectively, it can help businesses reduce costs, save money on marketing, improve customer experience, and increase sales.
Crowdsourcing allows for a human-centric business model where any business can quickly access its target audience and the best talents in its respective fields. It is the future of collaborative business development in a highly connected world and allows more opportunities to innovate and rethink the existing conventional processes.

Table of Contents

• The difference between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing
• Types of crowdsourcing solutions for retailers
• How to use crowdsourcing in your retail business
• How does crowdsourcing for retailers work?
• Applications of crowdsourcing for retailers
• Benefits of crowdsourcing for retailers
• Best crowdsourcing tools and solutions for retailers
• Challenges and concerns of crowdsourcing retail
• FAQs

The difference between crowdfunding and crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is not to be confused with crowdfunding, which is solely the collection of money to support a business, an individual, or a charity. Crowdfunding projects may or may not compensate the funders, depending on the agreement in place.

Crowdsourcing goes beyond crowdfunding and includes more than just financial support collection from willing contributors. Crowdsourcing can also include work hours, knowledge sharing, and more. It can pertain to any contribution made to a particular project via a group of people over the internet without necessarily having to be a full-time part of it.

Video about the Difference between Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding

Types of crowdsourcing solutions for retailers

Based on the services utilized, crowdsourcing can be broadly categorized into four types:

• Wisdom
  

  It is considered that the collective wisdom of a group is usually better than what individual experts can offer. When a company requires a resolution to an issue, it can use crowdsourcing services to gain insights and expert knowledge on the same from a crowd.

• Creation
  

  The online knowledge database Wikipedia is one good example of this type of crowdsourcing, where multiple people join together and collaborate to create some product, idea, or design. Open-source software is also built on similar crowdsourcing methods.

• Voting
  

  Voting or surveys allow companies and individuals to gain feedback and insights from their audience.

• Funding
  

  Various modes of crowdfunding allow people to raise money for any purpose. It allows people to rely on many funders, each making smaller contributions, rather than relying on a small number of donors or investors to make large contributions.

How to use crowdsourcing in your retail business

Some useful crowdsourcing solutions that can be of help to retailers are:

• Copywriting
  

  Content, product descriptions, reviews, and buying guides can be crowdsourced for social media content, blogs, product localization, and any other relevant content.

• Data processing
  

  Retailers can use crowdsourcing resources to perform data analysis and reporting.

• Boost online reputation
  

  Crowdsourcing can effectively build a brand’s image in digital spaces. It can be used to develop better websites, manage social media accounts, comment moderation, make your business more searchable, and more.

• Testing User Experience and Conducting Mystery Checks
  

  The customer experience is the foundation for improved sales performance. Retailers can use crowdsourcing to test their services, products, and overall user experience. In particular, Mystery Checks offer a valuable way to assess the quality of customer service and adherence to company standards both online and offline. These checks help identify potential weaknesses that could negatively impact the shopping experience, enabling retailers to make targeted improvements.

There is no particular constraint on how you can use crowdsourcing. It allows businesses to connect with various contributors that would otherwise not be possible. Traditionally, you would probably get expert wisdom from just a few retail professionals. But with crowdsourcing, you can get never-before-seen ideas that regular professionals would not even dare to question. Through crowdsourcing, you can get varied suggestions and generate many out-of-the-box ideas.
It can help you check product field marketing as well. Several platforms, such as Trax Retail, Roamler, BeMyEye, and Field Agent, have helped retailers better understand how their products perform in stores.

How does crowdsourcing for retailers work?

Any retail business can use crowdsourcing to achieve its business goals within its budget and time limitations. Crowdsourcing allows retail businesses to get access to a wider talent pool. It lets them connect with a huge digital community, which can provide them with a wealth of information, skills, and market knowledge. With crowdsourcing, businesses can make quicker decisions, innovate better and be aware of their market conditions and target audience.

Businesses can use crowdsourcing platforms to request information and get quick answers to their queries. For instance, survey sites allow retail businesses to quickly gather feedback and responses from their target audience and know how their products will perform in the market.
Retail businesses can also post any requirements for short-term gigs or talents for their projects. They could gather new ideas for their marketing strategy and product design and collect instant feedback from the collective participation of the crowdsourcing platforms. Being customer-oriented, retail businesses can benefit much more from crowdsourcing and thus create better engagement and customer loyalty.

Retailers can break up a big job or project into smaller gigs and crowdsource them to multiple people. For instance, a company can create a competition for logo design and invite entries from multiple graphic designers for a modest fee. Once they pick their favorite design from the entries, they can finalize it and pay the respective designer the full amount for the logo.

Tip:
Explore the transformative world of crowdsourcing in retail! Discover how our customized crowdsourcing services for retailers can help you gain customer insights, optimize processes, and improve the overall customer experience.

Applications of crowdsourcing for retailers

By tapping into the collective intelligence and creativity of the crowd, retailers can enhance various aspects of their operations and elevate the overall shopping experience. Here are some typical applications of crowdsourcing for retailers:

• Product Innovation and Development:
  Crowdsourcing allows retailers to gather ideas and feedback from a diverse pool of contributors. Retailers can involve customers, employees, and even external experts to generate new product concepts, refine existing offerings, and identify emerging trends. This collaborative approach ensures that products align with consumer preferences and market demands.

• Market Research and Trend Analysis:
  Understanding consumer behavior and market trends is crucial for retailers. Crowdsourcing enables them to collect valuable insights on customer preferences, buying patterns, and emerging trends. By engaging the crowd in market research activities, retailers can make data-driven decisions and adapt quickly to changing market dynamics.

• Visual Merchandising and Store Layout Optimization:
  The arrangement of products within a store significantly influences the customer’s shopping experience. Retailers can use crowdsourcing to gather feedback on store layouts, displays, and visual merchandising strategies. This helps in creating an attractive and intuitive shopping environment that encourages customer engagement.

• Customer Service Enhancement:
  Crowdsourcing can be employed to improve customer service by allowing customers to share their experiences, provide feedback, and suggest improvements. Retailers can leverage the collective knowledge of the crowd to identify pain points in the customer journey and implement solutions that enhance the overall service experience.

• Localization and Personalization:
  Retailers often operate in diverse markets with unique preferences and cultural nuances. Crowdsourcing enables retailers to tailor their offerings to local tastes and preferences. By involving the local community in the decision-making process, retailers can ensure that their products and services resonate with specific target audiences.

• Quality Assurance and Testing:
  Prior to launching a new product or service, retailers can use crowdsourcing to conduct thorough quality assurance and testing. This involves engaging the crowd to identify potential issues, provide feedback on prototypes, and test the usability of products. This collaborative approach helps retailers address issues before they reach the broader market.

• Social Media Marketing and Content Creation:
  Crowdsourcing can be a powerful tool for generating user-generated content and marketing materials. Retailers can encourage customers to share their experiences on social media, create user-generated content, and even participate in content creation contests. This not only boosts brand engagement but also provides retailers with a steady stream of authentic and relatable content.

Benefits of crowdsourcing for retailers

The major advantages of crowdsourcing are cost reduction, quicker operations, and broader access to a huge pool of talent and workforce that may not be otherwise available to the business.
The advantages and benefits of crowdsourcing for retailers are:

• Access to a wider network of expertise and knowledge
  

  Crowdsourcing opens doors to directly connect with the top talents in the industry without having to make costly investments for talent acquisitions.

• Open innovation
  

  Crowdsourcing connects you with a wide range of audiences, thus letting you get access to plenty of good ideas and insights. This can help accelerate innovation in your retail solutions and strategies.

• Direct connection and deeper engagement with consumers
  

  Crowdsourcing allows businesses to get in touch with their consumers directly and gather more insights than traditional methods. Crowdsourcing allows companies to reach a huge audience that would otherwise be limited to small focus groups.

• Crowdsourced jobs
  

  Many jobs, from website creation to copywriting and designing, can be effectively crowdsourced at a cheaper rate.

• Wide-scale collaboration
  

  Crowdsourcing makes it possible to bring together multiple user groups, skill levels, and experts towards a common cause. It can help reach out to different communities and aid in easy collaboration across various disciplines, as is required for a project.

• Quick resolutions
  

  Unlike regular talent acquisitions or design processes, crowdsourcing allows for quick information gathering and faster access to a wide audience. This helps companies and individuals working with tight deadlines and limited resources.

Best crowdsourcing tools and solutions for retailers

Here are some popular crowdsourcing platforms and tools that retailers can use:

Graphic and product design

1. Designhill
2. Flickr Creative Commons
3. 99Designs
4. Unsplash

Challenges of crowdsourcing retail

While crowdsourcing offers many benefits for a retail business, one should also be wary of the various challenges and concerns that come with it.
The results of an operation or feedback could be biased or skewed based on the source — crowd, platform, or group. Retailers must take proper caution to avoid such issues to get accurate results.

Crowdsourcing is most suitable for short-term gigs and funding projects with a definite goal. When applied to long-term projects, it can cause problems with accountability and sustainability of the project. Most crowdsourcing projects have a definite timeline or deliverables to be achieved. Not having clear goals will lead to squandering resources. It could also become counterproductive as all the different inputs from multiple sources can be too overwhelming to manage.
Crowdsourcing can sometimes be challenging to figure out the best ideas and talents you can get. The overall direction of projects and goals could be misdirected as too many ideas can sometimes distract from the actual goal.

Crowdsourcing can present a challenge with respect to intellectual property protection. Companies should make the necessary arrangements and legal contracts to resolve any issues arising from ownership disputes for any idea, design, or product.
Companies must also take extra caution regarding their confidential data, as opening up their projects and ideas to a wider audience can lead to a lack of confidentiality. For example, disclosing too much information about your marketing strategy may alert your competitors to it, giving you an advantage.

Ridhi Sharma