Are These Shoes Meant for Shopping?

Posted on March 27, 2017 by bermanevansretail
Over the years, retailers have done lots of research on shopper behavior. including eye tracking and facial recognition. Now, we can add shoe (foot) tracking to the list of research techniques used by retailers.
As Oliver Smith reports for The Memo:
“Now,  there’s a novel new technology that can figure out your age, gender, and social class, just by looking at your feet. Hoxton Analytics has created a small camera unit which, placed close to the floor near the doors of a shop, watches people’s shoes as they walk by.”
“As well as counting the sheer number of people walking past (the ‘footfall’ of the store), the cameras use artificial intelligence to figure out the kind of people who are walking. Hoxton can deduce gender, age, social class, and whether people are alone or in a couple, all from looking at their shoes. What makes Hoxton so unique is that retailers get all this data without any ‘creepy’ privacy invasions, like tracking your smartphone or watching your face.”
Click the image to learn more.

Hoxton’s low-profile cameras track people’s shoes.


 
Posted in Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer, Technology in Retailing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

The Future Roles of the Physical Store

Posted on March 23, 2017 by bermanevansretail
As we are well aware, many traditional brick-and-mortar stores are evolving in response to the impact of online shopping — which more and more people are using both to acquire information and to make purchases without visiting a store. Big changes are ahead.
A logical question is: What roles will be most important for store retailers as we forecast the near future (two to three years)? Let us look to the following for part of the answer. As eMarketer reports:
“A new report from Avanade, a provider of digital cloud services, and EKN Research found that while nearly 80% of retailer professionals worldwide currently believe traditional sales are the primary business function of stores, that will change in the next two to three years. By 2020, traditional sales activities will fall to the bottom of what retailers expect from stores. At the top will be theme-based stores, fulfillment centers and pop-ups.”


 

Posted in Part 1: Overview/Planning, Part 2: Ownership, Strategy Mix, Online, Nontraditional, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 5: Managing a Retail Business, Part 6: Merchandise Management and Pricing, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Most Popular Supermarkets by State

Posted on March 21, 2017 by bermanevansretail
Did you know that there are really no national supermarket chains in the United States, except for those operated by retail giants Walmart and Target (both of which have supermarkets in many of their big-box stores)? As a result, supermarket popularity varies greatly by state.
As reported by Business Insider:
“Americans are passionate about their grocery stores. But some of the most popular chains in the nation only exist is particular regions, so it’s likely you’ve never even heard of some of them. The mobile search-and-discovery app Foursquare put together a list of the most visited grocery stores in each state across the U.S., based on its own visit data.”
Click here to see the most popular supermarket in each state and then take a look at this short video.

 

 

Posted in Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 4: Store Location Planning, Video Clips (non-career) | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment