Retailers benefit from learning how shoppers navigate their stores. An uptick in e-commerce has provided online stores with a plethora of easily captured data analytics, but brick-and-mortar stores can turn to these solutions to gain competitive insights about their customers and their business operations.

Image credit: Gorilla Technology

The past year has changed how and where we shop. Brick-and-mortar retailers have been working overtime to win customer business in an era rife with competitors—both in-store and online. Once customers enter the store, retailers will benefit from knowing how those customers shop.

Artificial intelligence-based solutions that use camera-based solutions can provide an array of retail analytics. Businesses can monitor customer behavior, dwell time, and purchase trends and make changes quickly in a single store or across multiple locations. Several companies are making it easier for system integrators to create solutions that give retail customers insights that can improve business efficiencies, consumer relationships, and the bottom line.

Smart Retails Solutions from Gorilla Technology Group

Gorilla Technology has a Smart Retail solution that uses its Intelligent Video Analytics Recorder (IVAR) edge AI platform to collect and correlate operational, shopper, and product data for retail business owners. Smart Retail uses cameras, IoT devices, and machine learning to determine the number of shoppers in a store, assess their gender and age and couples that with point-of-sale data to help shape sales, marketing, and advertising strategies. It also supports targeted marketing and personalized content delivery.

In addition, Smart Retail can monitor staff and assess the store layout. It detects how shoppers navigate through the store and analyzes dwell time to determine consumer behavior and conversion rates, along with product and brand popularity. Store owners can use that data to deliver targeted advertising, adjust staffing needs, and alter inventory to meet market demands.

A metrics dashboard shows real-time data and can be integrated with the store’s existing POS and inventory databases. Owners can compare the data in a variety of ways and against other locations.

Tracking Crowd Density with ASUS

The ASUS IoT solution can track crowd density within the store, and at specific locations, such as checkout, to alert staff if too many customers are gathering. Notifications can tell staff when to temporarily close the doors to new customers, and the software can determine with 98 percent accuracy if customers are wearing face masks.

Using an intelligent edge device, object recognition technology, and checkout lanes equipped with scales, the ASUS IoT solution enables quick self-checkout for shoppers, foregoing the need to scan barcodes. The solution requires only a dozen or so initial images, and then uses machine learning to improve its capabilities. ASUS IoT can tie into back-office systems to maintain inventory with 90 percent accuracy.

The ASUS IoT solution can scale from a single unit to an edge gateway to a large server depending on the client’s needs. It’s based on the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ Toolkit, which improves optimization and security features, and the open architecture and APIs make it easier for system integrators to develop customized and integrated solutions. Through an alliance with Gorilla Networks, ASUS can provide operational technology protection and monitoring.

Business Intelligence with Advantech

Advantech teamed with Cloud Interactive to develop UShop+, a cloud-based business intelligence platform for retailers. It provides store traffic analytics, a store heatmap, and interactive digital signage to measure operational efficiencies and shopper engagement. The solution, powered by Intel® Core™ and Intel® Celeron® processors, combines video analysis technology with POS transaction data, enabling retailers to assess their marketing and sales strategies, consumer outreach and engagement, and peak shopping hours for each location.

Advantech also has a channel program that offers pre-tested, ready-to-integrate apps through the company’s WISE-Marketplace. The retail suite of products includes the StoreVue Inspection, StoreVue Signage, and StoreVue Store BI apps. They use IoT and cloud-based technologies to capture a host of shopper behavior and purchase information, which operators can view on a dashboard.

Retailers can take advantage of IoT-based solutions, which level the playing field as they compete with digital stores for consumers. Armed with real-time data, store owners can see how customers shop in the store, and they can respond quickly to improve business.