With retail becoming increasingly competitive, operators all find themselves asking the same question: how to retain existing customers and bring even more customers to grow their business. To that end, security can help collect important data that improves operators’ sales and marketing.
For decades, chain operators have been using video surveillance, EAS systems, and other applications for loss prevention. However, with retail becoming increasingly competitive, operators all find themselves asking the same question: how to retain existing customers and bring even more customers to grow their business. To that end, security can help collect important data that improves operators’ sales and marketing.
People counting and heat mapping are two common applications that can help retailers calculate conversion rates and test and make changes to their floor plan. Since chain stores are standardized, retailers can relatively easily test the impact of changes to their marketing strategy — for example, making a change in the layout of one store and then comparing it to similar locations where the layout remained the same.
Analyzing information collected from the video surveillance or other systems gives businesses insights into customer behavior as well as business performance. RFID tags for example can also be used for item-level inventory accuracy across the entire supply chain. This can be implemented to drive margin and fulfillment sales as well as lower inventory costs, as it reduces interim inventory requirements.
“In our experience, chain stores retailers are frequently savvy enterprises who are very knowledgeable on loss prevention solutions. They are looking for customer touchpoints, customer behavior, and various ways to find customer satisfaction,” explained Atul Ghaisas, Business Development Manager of Asia, Pacific & India at Tyco Retail Solutions. “They seek solutions that help optimize store performance, drive operational improvements, and business growth.”
Ghaisas sees this trend as one of the indicators to a market’s maturity. “In certain markets, the pre-eminent focus remains on implementing solutions that provide enhanced electronic article surveillance (EAS) and loss prevention protection; while in more mature markets, obtaining more accurate and insightful shopper analytics to drive conversion, sales, and improve customer experience are the absolute Holy Grail.”
Taking the right measurements and actions
Robert Verhulst, Sales Business Development Manager for Retail Vertical in EMEA at Bosch Systems, added: “The market is strongly looking after integrated added-value solutions that provides retailers synergy and lowers their operational costs. It’s all about using this information in a way that you have knowledge about customer behavior in order to take the right measurements and actions. In this way the investment in a video surveillance system becomes investing in a powerful marketing analysis tool.”
E-commerce is an example of data-driven business. E-retailers use algorithms to measure every possible interaction the user had with the shopping website. Dwell time, search history, and browsing history are all used to offer products that have the highest chance of being bought. Since companies today actively engage in omni-channel sales and marketing as well as “online-to-offline” sales, the level of analytics from the brick-and-mortar stores needs to match those of the online stores.
“Analytics from security systems give retailers the same tracking of customer behavior in brick-and-mortar stores as when they are online browsing and shopping,” said Johan Åkesson, Director of Business Development for Retail at Axis Communications.
“Various business analytics such as people counting are frequently asked for. This is a way for the chains to compare store conversion rate as well as manage staff schedules. Campaigns, store layout changes, and optimization can be measured and compared between stores,” Åkesson added. “Other examples include creating a better customer experience in the store by using predictive queue management or making cold areas warmer. Business analytics are asked for not only by operations and marketing but also by loss prevention to improve security. Sharing devices in this way and utilizing the intelligence in network IP cameras means that cameras are able to be used by many stakeholders and for more than one purpose.”
In the end, security at chain stores has seen its role evolving. Operators who formerly used video surveillance and other systems to protect people and assets now use them to obtain data and study customer behavior, based on which they can make data-driven decisions to help grow their business. Indeed, in today’s retail, investing in security becomes investing in a powerful analytics tool.