“SmartPhones” are affecting our life, and our daily activity, but its time to change our shopping activity as consumers but also our marketing strategy as retailers. In the old times merchants user to say that “if a customer will step in your shop his dust is your profit”, today this visit is not the dust its your valuable asset, as nowadays you know your client and how to serve him exceptionally.

Retailers are facing a big challenge – the store traffic drops affecting the revenue growth and slowing stores openings, as shoppers prefer to make online purchases.

According to ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based data firm that records store visits for retailers,  shopper visits have fallen by 5% or more from a year earlier in every month for the past two years while on line purchases have gained ground.

The connection of objects with sensors and software (Internet of Things) has changed a lot how companies from Healthcare to Retail fetch data and transform it into valuable information in order to improve critical operations.

The introduction of in-store analytics came as a lifeline for Retailers to face the loosing ground of in-store traffic and empower their marketing operations. But how in-store analytics can help retailers’ marketing performance?

In-store analytics software come with an integrated system of sensors like proximity sensors, visitors counting, video management, doors openings and others. Combining all these together, retailers gain access to a series of important insights for consumers’ behaviour, like who are their visitors (demographics), how much time they spend in the store or in specific departments (dwell) and how frequently they come back (loyalty).

A majority of shoppers aged 35-45 visit “ Snacks” before going to Cashier Registry – That’s an important fact for product placement on end cap displays.

Nowadays, Marketers have a new toolkit to understand how their shoppers behave in the store, what’s the performance of their marketing campaigns and identify growing needs of their customers. Tracking visitors’ in-store journey, their engagement with promo campaigns and the conversion to sales is a valuable outcome for marketing operations.

Even important factors like the weather, can be taken into consideration and it’s contribution to sales performance of a specific product category.

It’s Saturday evening, visiting the supermarket to buy some beers cause tonight is playing  your favourite team. What about getting a special offer 4+2 beers when passing by? The advance of technology and usage of smartphone devices & wearables makes possible for marketers to combine analytics with an in-store marketing program. Actions triggered to visitors’ smart devices based on their accurate position is one of the goodies coming up with an in-store analytics program. Marketers can personalise the location-based campaigns via advanced targeting options and even automate the procedure.

Nevertheless, in-store analytics don’t provide benefits only to Marketing, but several other functions, including Merchandising, Operations and Loss Prevention. The growing need of in-store analytics was captured in a recent research that the market is estimated to grow from USD 2.2 Billion in 2015 to USD 5.1 Billion by 2020.