Real-time mapping technology provider Shoppermotion is using big data company Cloudera’s Enterprise Data Hub to power its IoT tool for retailers.
The Spanish company, which helps brands and retailers to better understand in-store customer behavior, is using IoT-enabled devices to track their journeys up and down the aisles.
These devices, embedded in carts and baskets, produce large volumes of data, which is then stored and analysed by Shoppermotion in a data platform based on Cloudera’s Hadoop-based Enterprise Data Hub. (Hadoop is an open source big data framework and Cloudera is one of its leading distributors.)
From there, Shoppermotion is able to analyze the millions of routes that shoppers take through a store, including how long they spend in each aisle, how long they linger in front of particular items, and where the ‘hot zones’ and ‘blind spots’ are located, all in real-time. Predictive analysis, meanwhile, will help retailers make improvements to store layouts.
“Cloudera provides us with an end-to-end modern machine learning platform and industry-leading support that saves us time and effort carrying out maintenance and configuring tasks,” said Marco Doncel, CTO of Shoppermotion.
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Creating the IoT store
Shoppermotion is working with some significant names in retail, including IKEA, Unilever, and Carrefour. In each Shoppermotion-supported physical retail store, small beacons are attached to the shopping carts and baskets, which transmit a signal every second to Bluetooth sensors in the ceiling, in order to track the shopper.
According to Shoppermotion, information about each store is accessible to clients via a customized analytics dashboard. This measures the loss of traffic in each aisle, traffic flows throughout the store and can predict when queues at the checkout will hit a peak.
Retailers can use the Shoppermotion technology to compare promotion conversion rates to individual aisle conversion rates. This enables them to test the best time to run specific marketing campaigns in-store.
“By taking advantage of the intelligence from this platform, one of our clients was able to drive a nine percent increase in sales for one of their main categories after making changes to the layout of their store affecting traffic flow,” said Jorge García Bueno, CEO of Shoppermotion. “Dwell time increased by 1.3 minutes in that same area.”
David Pieterse, VP EMEA at Cloudera, suggested that by using Hadoop, Shoppermotion had created an IoT offering that wasn’t possible before.
“They are accessing data previously unavailable and using it to improve the shopping experience for consumers and create new market opportunities for retailers. The retail industry will be forever transformed through this innovative application of IoT,” he claimed.
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