Today’s Stores are not merely interested in what the Customer buys. They also want to know how the Customer shops, where the customers walk and what items they stop to touch and pick up. Knowing where customers move is extremely useful for retailers. It allows them to optimize their store layout and strategize about where to place popular vs. unpopular and expensive vs. cheap merchandise.
A Heat Map is the graphical representation of any individual value. The matrix of this representation is represented by colours. The different colours that are seen in this graphical representation have different meaning or depict different values for different data.
Heat Maps show the ‘customer hotspots’ on the shop floor which can be a proxy for areas generating the maximum revenue. It allows store managers to have, at a glance, a view of its customers’ behaviour.
A Flow Map in a retail environment gives an indication of the movement of customers within a business from the time they enter to the time they leave.
Flow Maps provide information on the ‘movement of customers’ as well as the ‘trends for different directions’ on the shop floor.
Benefits to Retailers
These video analysis tools help the store promote product most effectively.
They help Identify the following:
Hot spots – busiest areas of the store
Dead areas
Bottlenecks
Store traffic
Category and product traffic performance
Shopper flow – the way they move in the store
Store zone activity
Dwell time – how long clients stay in different areas
They also assist the following functions:
Queue management
Service optimization
Analyze existing marketing & promotions
Optimize store layout
Adjust staffing to accommodate shopper flow
Adjust pricing to manage existing as well as incoming inventory
Identify marketing and promotion opportunities
Maximize customer loyalty
Application Examples
Groceries
They tend to place their highest margin items at the very front of the store and by the checkout aisle. Research has also shown that people are more likely to purchase items on the right-hand side of an aisle. Analysis makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of such product positioning.
Clothing retailers
Knowing where customers move is extremely useful for retailers. It allows them to optimize their store layout and strategize about where to place popular vs. unpopular and expensive vs. cheap merchandise. The data can also help identify pricing problems. For example, if lots of people are touching an item but few are actually buying it, then it suggests that the merchandise is too expensive. A Heat Map would make it possible for the retailer to realize that an item really isn’t selling and should therefore be relegated to a less prominent location.
Summary
Images captured by the network cameras are analysed by the Video Analytics system to create in-store Heat and Flow maps.
Heat and Flow maps make in-Store Retail operations smooth and fast. These also help in making in-store retailing more efficient and productive.
Heat and Flow maps are helping retailers track what the customers touch, what they ignore, and where they walk. This is achieved in ‘real-time’ and therefore helps the Store to optimize layouts, thereby improving profitability.
Mr. Kiron Kunte
About Author
Kiron Kunte has over 35 years of design and solutions experience, in Security, Telephony and Networking infrastructure. He is a graduate of IIT Bombay, a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers and has a post-graduate diploma, from Bombay University, in Systems Management. He is professionally certified in the design and engineering of Data Centres, IP Telephony, Video surveillance and Structured Cabling solutions. He heads Norik Konsult, a practice that offers advisory, design and system planning help to upgrade or build a new Telephony, Security and Networking infrastructure.
