In-Store Analytics optimize the shopping experience in retail

Home appliances retailer BSH measures customer engagement with metrics from smart cameras
The next generation of retail stores optimizes sales floor presentations by tracking customer traffic. At home appliances store BSH in Vienna, Bosch cameras with built-in Intelligent Video Analytics collect metadata on how customers respond to special displays. Drawing on this actionable data from in-store analytics, retailers can create more inspiring customer experiences at brick-and-mortar locations.
When it comes to allocating display space in brick-and-mortar stores, retailers face a challenging question: How efficient are special product presentations in generating customer interest and, ultimately, sales? Unlike online shopping, where every click is tracked for analysis, stationary retail lacks hard data on how customers navigate through product presentations. That’s why the home appliances retailer decided to adopt In-Store Analytics at its Vienna brand store for a new level of insights into customer traffic and engagement.
Actionable data for store operators
In particular, the retailer wanted to measure the effects of a new design concept for the sales floor. It relies on displaying key products, for instance washing machines, prominently on special ‘highlight walls’. The walls feature plexiglass backdrops in light blue color and special lighting to attract customers’ attention. But from a logistics perspective, highlight walls cost more and provide less display space than ‘regular’ product stands. So are these specialized displays worth the investment?
Privacy and business intelligence
The data-based answers arrived with Bosch In-Store Analytics. Already trusted in retail environments across the globe, the analytics suite relies on Bosch IP cameras equipped with Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) to gather metadata on customer traffic. Embedded discreetly into the ceilings, six panoramic IP cameras create an anonymized position data stream of shoppers’ movements. In-Store Analytics further processes this data into performance results and visualizations, shared through web interfaces with the store team. In comparing the impact of highlight walls versus other store displays, the team can draw on an unprecedented level of traffic data.
The engagement funnel provides precise metrics for behavior in specific areas of the store, including: The number of shoppers to have “passed by” a section. Also the amount who “dwelled” and slowed down in front of a display. And most importantly, the “engaged” shoppers interacting with a product. For long-term insights, these metrics can be compared to past data to see whether updates and special initiatives make an impact on engagement. At all times, full customer privacy is maintained by sending customer position data from the cameras directly to the Bosch In-Store Analytics Cloud, without video streams ever leaving the site.
Optimizing the retail store experience
The comprehensive data analysis, precise down to the level of an individual product display, yielded important insights. The store team learned that a washing machine displayed on a highlight wall achieves an 84 percent higher customer engagement rate than comparable, non-featured products. And these metrics were just the beginning of more data-based optimizations of customer experiences in stationary retail. Visualizations of in-store foot traffic allow the design team to select store layouts for optimal customer experiences and product discoveries. Based on findings from its Vienna location, the retailer implemented highlight walls to display featured products in its latest physical storefront in the town of Graz, opened in 2020.
Beyond product-specific metrics, In-Store Analytics also measures the success of initiatives such as live cooking events. By adopting In-Store Analytics, the retailer can leverage precise data sets in strategic decision-making. The team is able to calculate conversion rates for specific products as the basis for effective product positioning and evaluating the product portfolio on display at stores. In this new generation of retail experiences, ensuring high profitability per square footage is no longer a guessing game, but part of an ongoing optimization process to enhance the customer experience based on smart data.
“Thanks to engagement funnel, we can evaluate success of different design concepts based on a product-level experience.”
Stefan Tenor, BSH Home Appliances Group
More information: boschsecurity.com