Not that long ago, it wasn’t uncommon for retail outlets to have surveillance cameras stacked up in their corners to monitor customer movement with the primary purpose of preventing theft and catching shop lifters. Nowadays, retailers have discovered that this practice of monitoring customer movement, known as video analytics can also be used to serve as business process monitors, providing valuable data and insights that offer real benefit to the operations and people they serve.
Today, video analytics systems have become more sophisticated and technologically advanced and can significantly empower retailers to maximize efficiency whilst monitoring customer traffic and in-store customer behaviour, improving operational efficiency, minimizing theft and loss, increasing customer safety and ultimately improving sales and increasing profit.
By expanding the profile of the cameras, consumer researchers can analyse and push out dashboard reports on consumer behaviour. Businesses can better understand market behaviour in stores, what drives a person to a specific spot in the store, who is busy in the store at specific times of the day, age group trends, what is the consumer buying, the time they spent in a specific area of the shop etc.
How does it work?
With advanced motion detection and pattern recognition, Video analytics software examines each pixel in the frame and picks up even the slightest movement. Specific patterns can also be programmed for recognition.
With Video Analytics Retailers can:
- Use heat maps from advanced video equipment to ascertain the areas with the greatest frequency and activity (“hot zones”)
- Analyze store traffic to identify the dominant traffic paths
- Assess the effectiveness of window and marketing displays by measuring customer dwell time
- Use queue data to enhance operational efficiency and increase customer satisfaction
- Use surveillance networks to prevent accidents and enhance safety measures, detect suspicious in-store activity and monitor suspicious after-hours activity
Benefits
- Helps to pinpoint premium product positioning, determine general strategies for product placement and make better merchandising decisions
- Informs marketing decisions such as the most appropriate locations for in-store promotional campaigns
- Indicates the success of product placement and ROI on advertising investment
- Makes decisions that optimize staff allocation, space utilization and traffic flow in line with data regarding dwell time (stickiness) in certain areas
- Understands the customer traffic at check-out points and product counters across different time periods and seasons, to more strategically allocate human resources across the store and optimize staff shifts
- Detects suspicious activities from customers and even employees
