SAN FRANCISCO, Kalifornia - December 15, 2011 - Retailers have a case of web envy.
Brick-and-mortar stores have long wanted to track consumers the way online merchants do and are starting to figure out how. They're using security cameras to monitor shopping behavior and tracking mobile phones to divine which stores people visit.
The technologies mean retailers from discount chain Family Dollar Stores to luxury pen maker Montblanc can make changes on the fly - such as deploying more salespeople in a given department and moving high-margin merchandise to parts of the store where shoppers are more likely to see it.
"It's really a game-changing experience, and this is only the beginning," said Rodrigo Fajardo, a Montblanc brand manager, who says a 6-month-old tracking system prompted him to move best-selling items to another part of his Miami store, boosting sales 20%.
As increasing numbers of shoppers migrate to the web, retailers are using the new technology to boost sales and keep market share.
Online stores have advantages, including the ability to track how long shoppers linger and what they click on, said Lora Cecere, an analyst at Altimeter Group in San Mateo. By contrast, brick-and-mortar merchants wait for sales numbers to come in before taking action, she said.
"Right now, physical stores are only looking at dollars per person, dollars per store and ignoring big problems until the numbers come in," she said. "To compete, they need to embrace this data so they have the ability to innovate."
For years, retailers have deployed security cameras, largely to deter and catch shoplifters. Now some are using the cameras to watch how shoppers behave.
3VR, a San Francisco security firm that made its first product for the CIA, realized its cameras could be used to gather consumer data two years ago when T-Mobile USA Inc. asked if the firm could count people entering its stores, 3VR Chief Executive Officer Al Shipp said.
