“Retail is where most projects are in progress now. The complexity of the projects in brick and mortar retail has increased, because the companies have to come up with additional things to offer compared with online segment. Brick and mortar retail is under pressure to come up with tools to encourage customers to use its services, so more and retailers have been analyzing the data they have about each store to know whether they should allocate more people to the cash registers or to sections with more complex products (…), Bogdan Gavril, Sales Engineer & Trainer for Central and Eastern Europe of Swedish company Axis Communications, one of the leading actors on the market, told ZF.
He did not say how big the market was, mentioning only that it was booming.
“We are talking about equipment that analyzes information, generates reports about the areas of interest in stores, about the time customers spend in a certain sector, about the flow of customers in stores – data that allow retailers to optimize their stores.”
Retail needs optimization, safety and security solutions, as well as solutions to cut losses – cash register fraud, store theft. All these components require vide equipment and the optimization of stores is done via the video analysis mode installed directly on the security cameras that generate reports to a central data system, he added.
Companies can also use cameras to provide customers data about how busy a location is – such as gyms, for instance. Retailers are also buying customer demographic analysis solutions, which allows them to show personalized ads by age and gender on their in-store displays.
The market has also grown because of the expansion of the industrial projects for existing customers and the entry of new companies on the market.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)