New York City | The NRF this week brought a surge of optimism for retail analytics providers, including Advertima, Quividi, Xovis, Axis, and Cisco. After data privacy concerns, high investment costs, and a lack of data analysis knowledge had prevented retailers from investing in their technologies. Now, the emerging retail media boom could lead to a breakthrough.
In modern retail, data is indispensable. Most retailers nowadays are drowning in information. Unfortunately, most of this information is irrelevant. Now AI has come to stay and should be able to filter out the signals from the noise.
Retail analytics therefore fits perfectly into the times, because the shopper data collected by sensors is processed locally in real time (“on the edge”). This approach is ideal for retail media platforms, using insights on gender, mood, posture, and merchandise interaction to tailor targeted campaigns effectively.
In the past, there was a gap at the PoS: While retail analytics could recognize and analyze shopper behavior, the connected DooH and retail media platforms lacked speed. Another gap persisted in the back office, where reliable reporting and comparison with first-party data, like check-out data for measuring the “return of campaign,” were lacking.
These gaps are now narrowing, particularly as retailers have internalized the required expertise by establishing their own retail media units. This enables them to assess data in compliance with data protection regulations and addresses the issues at both the PoS and back-office levels.
Sunny prospects for retail analytics?
Actually, the demand for retail analytics should go through the roof, or so the industry hopes. But in-store investments in sensors and technology remain high, and food retailers are not in the mood to invest. But the development of new, high-margin revenue sources (retail media) could finally facilitate the breakthrough.
- Germany: Radio P.O.S. acquires majority in Nexgen
- France: Videlio Group with new majority owner
- Crowdstrike: A quarter of a million PCs still inop
- Record: InfoComm Asia 2024 visitors up 21%
- invidis confidential 20/24: Digital Signage Trends in Asia