RetailNext and Prism Skylabs offer tools for retailers to learn from their customer movements. RetailNext is prominently present in the world’s Top 10 of most innovative companies in Big Data and offers in-store analytics based on analysing sensors and images of security cameras. Prism Skylabs has a more basic offering with its product.
Can showrooming be stopped?
Have you ever seen something you wanted in a shop, tried it, checked the price online on your smartphone, found it was cheaper, and walked out? Welcome to the world of “showrooming”. This world is growing. U.S. Census data show physical stores still account for 95 percent of retail sales, but they are only growing at one-quarter the rate of online retailers.
Nowadays the innovative start-ups like Prism Skylabs and RetailNext can help brick-and-mortar shops to get directly insights in how customers move in their shops. So what do they offer?
- Remote access: see your shop for anywhere, any device
- Detection and analytics of in store traffic
- Visualization and discovery: heatmaps
Looking at the offerings of both companies you will see both offer similar products, where RetailNext has a more advanced offering and their latest product upgrade includes Male vs. female demographics and Employee detection. Where you can dispute if it does not reach the limits of privacy laws. Valid reasons for using security cameras in the workplace are normally: Preventing internal & external theft, and workplace violence, which seems to be changing with this technology. Facebook is investing in retail cameras which recognizes faces and links them to their user profile. In my opinion this would be a bridge too far, because how do get the consent of the visiting customer that he or she is informed that this identification process is done?
Prism Skylabs has a lower price tag and has a strong aspect of its service, where all the images and summarized data are completely anonymous. The technology uses security camera footage, but it essentially erases people from the video.Mentioned advantages are easiness to install and simple to use.
In an article of CNET Clothing designer Sunhee Moon talks about here experience with using Prism Skylabs. She has been using it in her two San Francisco shops for a few months. She says it’s absolutely worth the $50 monthly fee: “I can access this software in Asia, in New York, on my cellular phone…It’s very convenient, especially when there’s some kind of a problem…or a mannequin is getting changed up…It gives me peace of mind. It’s like me being there, without me being there.”
By studying the heatmaps, Moon learned that customers were gravitating toward the right side of her shop, so she rearranged her inventory. “I’ll try to put my best product there, or my best new releases on that side of the store,” Moon said. “And then my left side is when they’re leaving the store so…you could always put your sale things around that area to keep customers still engaged in the store.”
This kind of products provides direct and aggregated insight in customer movements and indicates the locations which are more and less attractive and can be used for improvement of displays and product placement. In its latest upgrade RetailNext is offering the combination of views from contiguous cameras to create a single kinetic heat map for an entire sales floor, offering a true view of activity throughout the store.
These tools will be able to connect more and more data sources, like:
- Video feeds
- POS systems
- WiFi
- RFID tags
- Digital signage
- Time-and-attendance system
- Etc.
This will create powerful and quick insights for improvements in designing spaces for all kind of purposes and sizes, where the privacy experience of the visiting customer is a concern and should be investigated in more detail.
Image: Evaletova | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images
