Shopper Tracker’s Kinect Hack Is Like Google Analytics For Retail Store Shelves

Josh Constine

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... → Learn More

Monday, December 5th, 2011
Shopper Tracker Here

Brick and mortar store owners can now get access to the same kind of analytics available to website admins. Shopper Tracker is a new product from Argentinian developer Agile Route built off of Microsoft Kinect. It analyzes customer movements to provide traffic flow analysis and heat maps indicating which shelves are attracting shoppers and which products they touch or take. This can be tied to conversion data by product SKU to help merchants optimize where products are placed within their stores.

To attain similar market research, merchants typically have to pay observers or use equipment and surveys that are expensive, inaccurate, and influence the behavior of the people they’re studying. With Shopper Tracker, multiple shoppers can be simultaneously tracked around the clock. As it doesn’t cost much more to conduct longer studies, merchants can get more confident results and do A/B testing.

Prism Skylabs, a company that debuted at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference, tries to pull similar traffic flow data from a store’s existing surveillance cameras. While Shopper Tracker requires an initial set up cost of buying several Kinect sensors, it provides much more specific activity about customer behavior. You can watch a demo video of Shopper Tracker in action here.

Also, check out our past Kinect coverage for more exciting hacks and a look at Microsoft’s beautiful new ad for the Kinect APIs.


Company: Agile Route
Website: agileroute.com
Launch Date: November 1, 2010

We are a small development company with passion for our work. In Agile Route we believe that projects are journeys, not destinations. Even very well charted paths can spring surprises when they are actually traversed. Our experience has shown us that adapting is the best way to actually get somewhere, finding shortcuts, preventing blockages and sometimes taking an unexpected detour that leads us into an even better place than the one we envisioned from the beginning. Like traversing an unknown...

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