IoT in retail adopted at the early stage of IoT concept, and the benefit of implementing IoT technologies in retail is providing better business intelligence.
The retail sector is one of the early adopters of the Internet of Things (IoT) concept of systems and sensors integration to provide better management and business intelligence. One major benefit of implementing IoT technologies is that retailers can leverage the information gathered and improve their customers’ in-store experiences.
IP cameras are considered as IoT devices since network cameras can be integrated with many other systems and provide information about more than just loss prevention and security, such as business intelligence and marketing insights. For example, video footage could be used to achieve the following purposes:
- Analyze customer behavior: collecting information about customer visit frequency or the amount of time that a shopper spends in front of a shelf.
- Staffing: Monitoring in-store visitor flow and assigning more staff to reduce the time clients have to spend waiting for in-store service.
- Store design: incorporating video footage with heat mapping can help retailers understand customer-product interaction and make better strategic merchandising decisions.
- Measure the effectiveness of marketing and promotional campaigns: by combining cameras, video analytics and PoS systems, retailers can assess sales data and link these up with customer profiles, such as gender and age.
Stop by Secutech 2016’s on-site retail demo store at booth# 5201 to take a closer look at IoT in retail!