NRF 2020 Show Recap: Why Retail Video Analytics was identified as a game-changing technology solution at Retail’s biggest show
C2RO’s privacy-aware video analytics solution, Perceive™, was recognized by show attendees at NRF 2020 to be the only retail analytics technology on the market to provide comprehensive in-store insights and shopper journey analysis while being compliant with GDPR, making traditional retail analytics technologies like door counters, WIFI, and beacons obsolete.
C2RO participated at this year’s National Retail Federation’s event, NRF 2020 Vision, as an exhibitor where experiential retail was the key focus of the show. Show attendees were introduced to the trends and new technologies that are transforming the traditional store into an agile space, offering visitors unique and memorable in-store experiences.
From Product to Experience at the Store
Customers now look to retail stores for exciting experiences, and to receive services and offers they can’t get online. With a new strategy and purpose for physical retail, JRNI’s session at NRF, How Retailers can Stay Alive and Create Exceptional Customer Experiences, noted that retailers end up with less stores but each one being a place to showcase the brand, offering them more flexibility in a store’s design and layout. Additionally, as basket size increases by 3X to 10x when customers shop in store, retailers must offer customers a five-sense engagement through memorable spaces and events to encourage in-store exploration and foster loyal brand communities.
However, it is important to note that experiential retail requires more than just modifying your store environment to entertain and immerse customers into your space. Retailers must change their mentality that physical retail is all about moving products from your store to the customer’s home. As mentioned during Retail Info System’s NRF 2020 Recap, It’s All About the Customer, the action of completing a sale is no longer an objective, but rather an outcome of customer’s having a positive experience with your brand online and in-store.
The store of the future is data-driven
In order to successfully adopt a customer-centric mentality and create experiences that customers cannot obtain online, brands will need data-driven stores. According to Varese’s NRF session, Store of the Future – Rethinking Physical Retail’s Role and Strategy, there are 4 notable areas where it would be advantageous to have a data-driven store:
Strategic perspective: data helps brands make better data-driven decision and shape feasible short-term and long-term goals with measurable results, ensuring that all business strategies will lead to steady long-term growth.
Marketing perspective: with near real-time data on the performance of your pricing and promotional strategies, brands are given an agile space to modify and test different strategies and effectively increase their in-store conversion and retention rate.
Operational perspective: with a better understanding of actual store traffic and performance, brands can match its inventory and workforce to actual in-store traffic and purchases.
Customer perspective: by reflecting real customer needs and purchasing habits in your store strategies and operations, you create a more frictionless, convenience and positive in-store experience.
Journey Analysis is Key in Understanding Customer’s In-Store Experience Retailers require data that goes beyond counting in-store walk-ins and identifying high-traffic areas, information that is generally provided by door counters, wifi or beacons. They now require access to technologies that provide them with a better understanding of customers’ shopping patterns and their in-store journey and behavior. The need for deeper insights has brought the rise of AI in retail with many companies turning to video analytics for customer insights, making door counters, wifi and beacons obsolete. For this reason, C2RO’s retail video analytics solution, C2RO Perceive™, was especially well-received among show attendees, attracting even the media to their booth.
C2RO’s CEO and President, Riccardo Badalone, explained in an interview how unlike other retail analytics solutions, C2RO Perceive™, is made for large scale deployments and designed to reconnect visitors from one camera to another to build demographically classified end-to-end visitor journeys without using biometric and personal data, hence being compliant with data privacy regulations such as GDPR.
“The market is no longer satisfied with traditional technologies such as door counters, wifi or beacons as they only provide partial quantitative data-points,” says Riccardo Badalone, CEO and President at C2RO. “C2RO PERCEIVE™ delivers rich, qualitative data such as demographically classified journeys and socio-demographic class behaviors which are critical elements to measure and understand for data-driven retail organizations.”
As discussed in our recently published Whitepaper, Journey analysis is a key enabler for experiential retail, as the physical path visitors take in-store continues to evolve from having a clear intent to purchase to simply visiting a store for exploratory purposes and to socialize with like-minded individuals. Retail brands and mall operators using video-based journey analysis solutions like C2RO Perceive™, can analyze the journeys to uncover brand and product relationships by demographic class, as well as link the journeys to marketing, sales and operations to maximize the ROI of business strategies.
Want to see how C2RO PERCEIVE™ can help transform your business? Schedule a Demo Here.