Artificial intelligence and data acquisition in retail
Retailers are collecting more data than ever before to help them maximise profits and improve the customer experience. As well as established techniques like people counting, they are increasingly using systems employing artificial intelligence.
One use of this is to better understand their customers. What pulls their audience's attention, what gender are they, how old are they, how long do they linger at a display and what products are they looking at? This data is combined with that produced by people counters, like average shopping time and sales conversion.
A practical example is enabling communication between a sensor detecting a shopper's characteristics and a digital sign. The sign uses the sensor's data to show an advert tailored to the type of person in front of it.
The data thus collected using computer vision and can also be made available over the Internet-of-Things.
All sorts of information can be accessed via the IoT - footfall, average shopping time, conversion, shopper characteristics, queuing times, hot spot maps of popular (and unpopular) areas, occupancy figures...letting retailers measure, experiment and improve.
