Soon, we shall be living in the world of Minority Report, and this “Smart Window” technology Samsung has at CES 2012 is going to help us get there. Ashley Esqueda checks out what’s happening over at the Samsung booth and gives a little demo of the window.
Shopper Tracker does just what it says it does, track shoppers as they move throughout the grocery store. The new twist in this tracker is that it uses a Microsoft Kinect to do so.
It analyzes customer movements to provide traffic flow analysis and heat maps indicating which shelves are attracting shoppers and which products they touch or take. This can be tied to conversion data by product SKU to help merchants optimize where products are placed within their stores.
To attain similar market research, merchants typically have to pay observers or use equipment and surveys that are expensive, inaccurate, and influence the behavior of the people they’re studying. With Shopper Tracker, multiple shoppers can be simultaneously tracked around the clock. As it doesn’t cost much more to conduct longer studies, merchants can get more confident results and do A/B testing.
The data can then be used by the store to determine which items are more popular and why customers go to a particular item, but never purchase it. The system is also capable of tracking multiple people simultaneously.
Shopper Tracker: tracking real world conversions like web analytics from Administrator Agile Route on Vimeo.
All the following metrics and reports can be filtered for any date/time range.
Visitors: people that are detected in the tracking zone. Associated metrics:
Visits and Visit duration
Zones: places where Visitors may physically be (e.g.: right in front of a particular part of the shelf). Associated metrics:
% Visitors through Zone and Average time in Zone
Area: a 3 dimensional space containing products the Visitor may touch (e.g.: an imaginary box right in front of one particular SKU in the shelf)
Event: an Event occurs when a Visitor touches an Area in the shelf. Associated metrics:
Total Events and Events per Area
Average Event time
Visits with Event and Events / Visit Ratio
Conversion: grabbing a product from an Area (requires image captures post-processing). Associated metrics:
Conversions and Conversions per Area
Average Conversion time
Conversions / Events
Visits with Conversion and Conversion / Visit
Goals: grabbing a SKU of interest (e.g.: own product SKU). Associated metrics:
Goal Funnels
Product traction
Other type of reports: Heat Maps
Available reports:
- Visitor transit paths
- Visitor touch location in the shelf
- Conversion locations in the shelf
From The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Technology now exists that can allow a government security agency to secretly and remotely install a small piece of software on your mobile phone. This will turn it into a device that can trace your location, listen in to your conversations, and even take pictures of you and the people around you using the built-in camera.
This video showcases technology offered by Italian software company Hacking Team. The company claims its software can be installed on phones running popular operating systems, including the Apple iPhone, BlackBerries, and phones running Windows Mobile.
In Video: Phone Tracking from TBIJ on Vimeo.
Following Digital Breadcrumbs To ‘Big Data’ Gold
What do Facebook, Groupon and biotech firm Human Genome Sciences have in common? They all rely on massive amounts of data to design their products. Terabytes and even zettabytes of information about consumers or about genetic sequences can be harnessed and crunched.
The practice is called big data, and as the term suggests, it is huge in both scope and power. Analyzing big data enables anything from predicting prices to catching criminals, and has the potential to impact many industries.
The Search For Analysts To Make Sense Of ‘Big Data’
Businesses keep vast troves of data about things like online shopping behavior, or millions of changes in weather patterns, or trillions of financial transactions — information that goes by the generic name of big data.
