Retail Customer Data: Know Your Store Shoppers (2027)

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Retail customer data is the information a retailer collects about shoppers, such as contact details, purchase history, and preferences. In physical stores, collecting this information at checkout helps you identify returning customers and personalize future offers.

In its 2025 report, EY, a Shopify alliance partner, reported an average known-customer rate of 80% across retailers using Shopify POS and the Shop Network, based on Shopify data from May 2025. These retailers can associate purchases with identifiable customer profiles and use that history to encourage repeat business.

In this guide, learn how to collect customer data in your physical stores, use it to personalize marketing, and track spending after the first purchase.

Anonymous store shoppers and what they cost your business

Anonymous store shoppers are customers whose purchases lack identifying information tied to a customer profile. Their transactions tell you what sold, but offer little information about who bought it, whether they are a new or returning customer, or how to reach them again. Details such as how shoppers discovered your store and what they’ve bought before help you personalize the customer experience (CX).

Incomplete customer records also limit a retailer’s efforts to provide a high-quality CX because they make the retail customer journey harder to follow across visits and sales channels. A returning shopper can appear as another anonymous transaction, obscuring the revenue generated by existing customers.

Makeup brand Sculpted by Aimee faced this challenge across their four brick-and-mortar stores. Kevin Clarke, then head of ecommerce, described the process of adding customer data as “a bit of a nightmare.” Despite tracking email capture as a key performance indicator (KPI), staff struggled with manual data entry that interrupted checkout and made targets harder to hit.

Managing retail customer data is more effective with a commerce platform built with that purpose in mind. With purchase histories and marketing permission inside Shopify’s unified commerce platform, you can:

• Recommend products related to past orders
• Send replenishment reminders based on previous purchases
• Invite nearby customers to exclusive store promotions
• Reward customers for their total spending across channels

In Sculpted by Aimee’s case, after moving to Shopify, the cosmetics brand increased their email capture rates by 275%. The brand also reported three to four times higher customer lifetime value (CLV) among customers who shopped both in-store and online compared with online-only shoppers.

The ROI of capturing more store shopper data

Retail customer data gives you the opportunity to increase your marketing return on investment (ROI) by earning another purchase from shoppers you’ve already paid to acquire.

Among retailers using Shopify POS, EY’s report linked the following benefits to known customers versus anonymous ones:

• Higher average order values (AOV): Known customers spent up to three times as much per order as unknown shoppers.
• More repeat business: Retailers saw a 61% increase in repeat purchases from known customers. That figure rose to 74% for retailers with revenue greater than $20 million.
• Sales growth: Known customers accounted for 76% of in-store gross merchandise value (GMV) growth.

You can easily track retail customer retention and repeat spending through Shopify’s Customer cohort analysis report. The report groups customers by the date of their first order, so you can follow their purchases over subsequent weeks, months, or quarters, and use the performance data to build stronger personalized marketing strategies.

You can also filter cohorts by first order sales channel to focus on customers acquired through POS. Compare groups acquired before and after a checkout change at the same number of months since their first purchase.

How Shopify POS collects customer data at checkout

Shopify POS makes it easy for customers to share their contact details during checkout, and saves their purchases to a profile staff can use on future visits. During this process, customer information moves through three stages: collect, organize, and activate.

1. Collect data

In-store first-party data—data retailers get directly from their customers—comes from transaction records, digital receipt requests, and customer preferences that staff record during customer conversations.

Shopify offers multiple ways to collect customer data at checkout:

• Staff can search for an existing customer by name or email and attach that profile to the sale.
• Digital receipt details create a customer profile associated with the order. Recognized shoppers see their information prefilled.
• Match a payment card to a shopper’s Shop account with Shop app receipts. The shopper must use Shop and pay with a card saved to their account, and they choose marketing consent separately from receipt delivery. For retailers, Shop app receipts require Shopify Payments, Shop Pay activated online, a Shopify card reader, and a connected customer-facing display.

2. Organize customer data

Keeping separate store and ecommerce records can split one shopper’s purchase history across multiple profiles. Staff might overlook an online purchase when recommending products or assessing a customer’s total spending, or miss additional details like loyalty program discounts. Such missed insights can hurt a retailer’s ability to offer high-quality personalized customer experiences.

“With our previous commerce platform, customer data was siloed,” says Joanna Puccio, assistant store manager at Diane von Furstenberg (DVF). “That made it difficult for our stylists to offer the kind of bespoke service our clients expected. We needed to see the full scope of their interests, purchases, and preferences at a glance.”

DVF migrated to Shopify to unify online and in-store purchases into a single customer profile. Retail associates can now retrieve a customer’s order history to personalize the experience.

At Shopify POS Pro locations, staff can view pinned customer metafields for details such as a shopper’s preferred size. DVF uses customer notes to record preferences. “Those qualitative insights really help us really make them feel like we’re their personal stylist the next time they shop with us,” says Joanna.

If one person has duplicate records, you can merge customer profiles in the admin. Review the contact details and order history before confirming the permanent merge.

3. Activate data

Matching purchases to the same customer gives staff a fuller buying history and lets you target offers based on previous orders. With Shopify POS, staff can review past purchases and saved preferences before recommending another product.

Use customer segments to group shoppers by purchasing behavior or location. Tell Shopify Sidekick the traits you want each segment to have. Shoppers automatically join a segment when they meet its criteria and leave when they no longer qualify.

For example, you could create a segment of customers who live near a store and invite them to an in-store launch event with a Shopify Messaging campaign.

DVF uses the Endear clienteling app with Shopify for personalized outreach. Joanna explains: “We can segment our customers by their shopping behavior or order history and proactively send them messages by text or email—whichever they prefer—to let them know when a product they’re interested in is back in stock, or when we have private pre-launch parties.”

Where to start with in-store customer data capture

To set up email capture for your retail store, first configure the checkout prompts and receipt options. Then review how you explain retail data collection to shoppers:

1. Configure customer information collection. At Shopify POS Pro locations, choose which name and contact fields to collect. Then select your collection setting: the Recommended setting prompts staff but allows them to skip this step if a shopper declines. The Required setting blocks checkout until the selected details are provided. Use Recommended so shoppers who decline to share their details can still complete their purchase.
2. Enable customer receipt selection. Customize what type of receipt you want to offer. For digital receipts, customers provide an email address or phone number, which may be prefilled for recognized shoppers. Shopify POS associates those details with the order or creates a new profile if they’re first-time shoppers. You can also recognize shoppers within the Shop network by activating Shop Pay online and meeting the requirements for Shop app receipts.
3. Review POS privacy notices. Check the notice shoppers see before sharing their details. Explain what you collect and how you use it, and make the privacy policy accessible at the register.