Retailers get technology to ‘track’ their customers

In a first for Indian retailers, mushrooming retail outlets will soon be equipped with ‘track-o-meters’ — a customer traffic counting technology that provides integrated retail information services.

The country is seeing a boom in the retail sector and retailers are keen to monitor the customer’s ways. Little surprise then, both domestic and international players are entering India to tap the opportunity. Navin Makheja, operations head (India), Experian Solutions which recently launched Footfall in India, said, “India is an emerging market, where modern retailing is in a nascent stage. We are close to signing deals with big Indian retailers and mall developers for installation of Footfall in their stores and malls.”

The technology generates information like conversion ratio – an indirect measure of performance of sales staff and average spend per visitor in addition to providing operational indicators like forecasting for seasonal holidays rush and staffing pattern during peak and average sales. For any retail outlet or even the huge shopping malls, it can predict advertising and marketing efforts, store design and remodeling projects, merchandise changes, training programs and other budget-intensive strategic initiatives. “With economies of scale being introduced with modern retailing, the motto will be – if you can’t measure, you can’t manage,” said Makheja.