Beyond Who the Customer Is: Behavioral Drivers of Value in Fashion Retail

Sammanfattning

This study examines how value is created in physical retail by comparing customer composition and in-store behavior as explanatory factors. While retailers commonly rely on Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) to identify high-value customers, it remains unclear whether these predefined segments are empirically linked to value creation within the store. Using a single-case study centered on one focal fashion retail store, the analysis combines aggregated in-store tracking data from Indivd with structured observational data from comparable retail environments. Due to the anonymized and visit-based nature of the data, value is operationalized at the visit level using conversion and value per visitor as outcome measures. The findings show that ICP-based customer composition provides a useful descriptive framework for understanding store performance but has limited explanatory power in predicting value outcomes. In contrast, behavioral patterns, particularly those reflecting active evaluation such as product interaction, cognitive engagement and fitting room usage, show more direct and consistent associations with purchase and estimated value outcomes. Behaviors indicating friction are negatively associated with purchase likelihood, while general exploration shows no significant association. These results suggest that visit-level value creation in this case is more directly associated with how customers behave during the store visit than with predefined customer composition alone. The study therefore highlights the importance of complementing traditional segmentation approaches with behavioral analysis and demonstrates how behavioral data can be used to inform retail decision-making.