Retail Analytics play a critical role in the retail industry. They help to improve customer experience, optimise operations, and better understand customer needs.

AI sensors are capable of many things that make them a valuable asset for retailers. For example, they can be used to improve customer experience by providing personalised shopping experiences and recommendations.

Sensors can also be used to optimise operations by helping retailers understand how customers are interacting with their stores and what they want, so they can make changes accordingly.

AI sensor driven retail analytics systems also have the ability to better understand customer needs by capturing information about the environment around them at all times – which can then be used for analysis purposes.

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

IoT is a network of devices, sensors, and other things that are connected to the internet. It is important because it allows retailers to track their products and customers in order to provide a better customer experience.

A lot of retailers are using IoT sensors to track their products. These sensors can be attached to the product or embedded into the product. They allow retailers to know where their products are at all times, which helps them keep inventory levels up and reduce waste.

This is beneficial for both the retailer and the shopper because it means that when shoppers come into the store they will always find what they need on the shelves.

Retailers also use IoT sensors in stores in order to track shoppers’ movements. This data can be used by retailers for a number of different purposes such as marketing campaigns or improving customer service experiences while shopping in stores like The Body Shop and Pandora Jewellery. Both of these retailers appointed Smart Urban Sensing to install IoT retail analytics systems through their chain of stores in the UK.

What is AI Retail Sensor Technology?

AI Retail sensor technology is the use of sensors and artificial intelligence to create an intelligent, data-driven retail experience. This type of technology is used for various purposes such as:

Gathering customer data
Understanding the customer’s purchase behaviour
Detecting inventory levels
Monitoring product quality
Understanding store layout and foot traffic patterns
Enhanced security monitoring and tracking.

What are the Benefits of Using AI Sensors for Retail Analytics?

The first and most obvious way that retailers benefit from these sensors is by making it easier for them to understand how many people are in their store at any given time.

Footfall counters are also a great way for retailers to understand how customers move around their stores and what areas of the store they spend more time in. This data can then be used with other analytics tools like heat maps to better understand where customers like to congregate, which areas of the store are most popular, and which parts of the store might need more attention from staff.

Retailers can use AI driven retail analytics sensor systems to better understand when a customer enters the store, how long they stay and what parts of the store they visit. This information can be used to determine peak times, product trends, improve staffing levels, better manage checkout queues and get valuable insights into the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, in store promotions, product placement and determine when products should be restocked on shelves.

The use of IoT systems also allows retailers to track the footfall traffic across multiple stores, evaluate the performance of individual stores compared to similar retail stores by benchmarking sales opportunities with the industry average, utilise business metrics to identify top and least performing stores and use this as a base point to improve turnover as well as optimise staffing levels allocation.

Retailers can also place sensors in their store displays to monitor customer engagement. This will help retailers create a better shopping experience for their customers and increase sales.

State of the art Retail Analytics Systems are made up of a combination of networked hardware devices; design to detect, sound, movement, light and heat; and a cloud based software system that receives, interprets and reports data sets that benefit retailers to improve operational efficiency, profits and security.

Examples of Retail Analytics Systems

One such retail analytics system is the Smart Urban Sensing V8 Analytics Manager, which provides reports such as:

Footfall Reports
Zoning Reports
Occupancy Reports
Marketing Effectiveness Reports

Smart Urban Sensing also manufactures, installs and maintains the V9 Retail Analytics Manager. This is a world leading Enterprise Class Software platform with cloud based control panels to collect and manage data, visualise the data and business metrics with a comprehensive range of dashboards and reports.

The fully comprehensive and premium V9 Retail Analytics software provides a range of software modules and helps retailer to make data driven decisions supported by in-depth business insights and metrics. The V9 Retail Analytics Manager is flexible and provides a software platform for data collection across all sectors.

The V9 integrates data from AI Retail Analytics sensors and hardware devices to provide customisable workspaces for retailers to plan and set targets, real time dashboard for business actions and KPI reports to visualise, measure and review the performance based on data metrics available.

With over 20 widgets & over 40 data metrics available, the custom report builder allows you to customise the dashboard & reports as required.