Using Heat Maps to Track Buyer Preferences

Heat mapping technology is helping brick and mortar retailers track customer behavior in real time.

One of the best—or worst, depending on your tolerance—things about the online shopping experience is the ease with which retailers can zero in on browsing patterns and serve up more items that you might want to buy. And now there’s technology to give traditional brick and mortar shops more evolved feedback on buyer preferences to do the same.

Prism Skylabs is using security camera images with thermal imaging to generate real-time heat maps of a shop’s layout and customer traffic, and then translating the data into a dashboard that can help store managers make adjustments in a variety of ways.

The heat maps identify which areas of the sales floor get the most use. They can also get as specific as identifying which items on a display table receive the most attention from shoppers. The data, paired with sales information, can help determine when items attract shoppers but perhaps aren't enticing enough to buy. Retailers can then determine whether the issue was missing sizes, pricing, quality or something else. 

Heat map or no heat map, let the shopping games begin.

About the Author

Beth Stackpole, contributing writer | Contributing Editor, Automation World

Beth Stackpole is a veteran journalist covering the intersection of business and technology, from the early days of personal computing to the modern era of digital transformation. As a contributing editor to Automation World, Beth's coverage traverses a range of industries and technologies, including AI/machine learning, analytics, automation hardware and software, cloud, security, edge computing, and supply chain. In addition to her high-tech and business journalism work, Beth writes an array of custom editorial content and thought leadership pieces.

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