Shopping with detectives
By Julie Clark, Associate Editor
Wednesday, May 1 2002
Wednesday, May 1 2002
Published on AllBusiness.com
You're being watched. Not by a man in a trench coat, but by cameras, computers and the Internet. The reason? To serve customers better and to keep them buying.
Customer tracking technology is on the rise and may be coming to a store near you (or it's already there). It may not know what a customer had for breakfast, but it can tell where the busiest sections of the store are, how long customers wait in line, how many customers abandon the line, how quickly employees are serving customers, whether in-store promotions get customers' attention and even what path customers take through the store. "This technology is about bringing better service to the customer," says Zoher Karu, Arlington, Va.-based Brickstream's director of product management. "It is one of the fastest growing technology segments."
Although Internet shopping has lost some of its luster, it has one clear advantage over bricks and mortar stores. "When customers are on the Internet, the retailer can retrieve a great deal of information about the customer, such as how many clicks did they make in the site, what did they look at, for how long and when they dropped their shopping cart. But in the in-store environment little is known beyond how many sales were made," says Karu. "Previously, retailers would use mystery shoppers or something of that sort to discover consumer information, but that was too slow, too costly and only worked for one individual store."
But with this technology, retailers can discover a wealth of information with the simple use of the Internet and a PC. Small cameras are placed throughout the store and are linked to "image understanding" software that later analyzes the data. "The PC looks at the video to determine the location of people by assigning X and Y coordinates. It can do this for all the people in the store, completely anonymously. Then the consumers can be tracked throughout the store," says Karu. The data is time-stamped so retailers can see how long customers had to wait in line or how long they waited before being helped in a department. "You can tell how many people walked down Aisle 5 at lunch time," he says.
Brickstream is working on a new technology that would directly alert retailers on their wireless device when certain events occur, such as long checkout lines. The company hopes to have this technology available for retailers by the end of this year. The information gathered from the Brickstream system revolves around three separate applications: Brickstream Intelligence for Service, Marketing and Space. The service application allows retailers to fully comprehend the level of customer service, while the marketing application helps visual merchandisers grade the store's merchandising and marketing displays and the space application reveals how the customers react to the store layout.
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Customer tracking technology is on the rise and may be coming to a store near you (or it's already there). It may not know what a customer had for breakfast, but it can tell where the busiest sections of the store are, how long customers wait in line, how many customers abandon the line, how quickly employees are serving customers, whether in-store promotions get customers' attention and even what path customers take through the store. "This technology is about bringing better service to the customer," says Zoher Karu, Arlington, Va.-based Brickstream's director of product management. "It is one of the fastest growing technology segments."
Although Internet shopping has lost some of its luster, it has one clear advantage over bricks and mortar stores. "When customers are on the Internet, the retailer can retrieve a great deal of information about the customer, such as how many clicks did they make in the site, what did they look at, for how long and when they dropped their shopping cart. But in the in-store environment little is known beyond how many sales were made," says Karu. "Previously, retailers would use mystery shoppers or something of that sort to discover consumer information, but that was too slow, too costly and only worked for one individual store."
But with this technology, retailers can discover a wealth of information with the simple use of the Internet and a PC. Small cameras are placed throughout the store and are linked to "image understanding" software that later analyzes the data. "The PC looks at the video to determine the location of people by assigning X and Y coordinates. It can do this for all the people in the store, completely anonymously. Then the consumers can be tracked throughout the store," says Karu. The data is time-stamped so retailers can see how long customers had to wait in line or how long they waited before being helped in a department. "You can tell how many people walked down Aisle 5 at lunch time," he says.
Brickstream is working on a new technology that would directly alert retailers on their wireless device when certain events occur, such as long checkout lines. The company hopes to have this technology available for retailers by the end of this year. The information gathered from the Brickstream system revolves around three separate applications: Brickstream Intelligence for Service, Marketing and Space. The service application allows retailers to fully comprehend the level of customer service, while the marketing application helps visual merchandisers grade the store's merchandising and marketing displays and the space application reveals how the customers react to the store layout.
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