In-Store Analytics Catching Up With On-Line Analytics

The Economist recently published an interesting article on how advances in security cameras are allowing stores to better track and respond to consumers.

It seems like it wasn’t too long ago that an average 3-year-old could easily beat a computer at determining someone’s gender by looking at a picture.  Now, these cameras are getting better at determining gender as well as age of the shoppers in the store.

This advance really allows in-store retailers to catch-up with their on-line counterparts in terms of understanding customers:  where do they spend their time, how long do they stay, what do they look at, and what do they ultimately buy?

The article provides an example of a retailer who determined when the number of shoppers peaked (it wasn’t when sales peaked) and built their staff schedules around that to generate more sales.

There is a lot more retailers can do with this information.  It will be interesting to see how this evolves over the next few years.

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