The very first step of profit generation for retail stores starts with well-planned merchandise planning. The retailer’s primary goal is to sell merchandise and services to its end customers to gain profit and create value for stakeholders. Thus deciding what to buy and how much to buy and that too for which store is a vital decision point every retail buyer has to analyze for the business. Merchandise planning is a data-driven approach relying heavily on historical data backed by personal experience and market trends.
A major flaw in merchandise planning is revealed when any retailer has to sell out their range of products at the end of the season with a heavy markdown. Selling products at markdown prices leads to erosion of profit margin deeply impacting the firm’s turnover at the end of the year.
Computer vision is one of the major solution providers on technical fronts for the retail industry. You can read here, how it helps other aspects of retail as well
Low footfall: analyzing the footfall of a store over a wide spread of time can help buyers determine the assortment and amount of stock for a store. Over a while suppose a store faces a major decline in footfall, an analysis could be induced, and customers may not be liking the merchandise offered by the store. Bringing in new collections for the same could be planned to attract new customers. Moreover, footfall analysis across multiple stores can also help to plan an effective stock rotation.
Demography: While planning merchandise of a store a vital point considered by the buyer is customer demographics. It is ideally important to identify the gender and the age group of customers being received by the store and accordingly merchandise assortment is planned. So with help of computer vision in retail, the demography of customers could be easily determined, helping the buyer group to plan and purchase assortment accordingly.
Read here, points to consider before implementing Computer vision in a retail store.
Customer Dwelling time: Customer dwelling time within a store is a major and quick parameter to gain insight into whether customers are liking the product or service. Customer dwelling time means the amount of time being spent by the customer within the store before purchasing anything or nothing at all and making an exit.
If a customer has spent a considerable amount of time within a store and has made a purchase, it implies the customer has gained enough information and has been and has therefore purchased. But if a customer has spent a considerable amount without making any purchase or conversion, high chances are that the customer had the intent to buy but could not find what he or she was looking for. This analysis of customer dwelling time along with conversion could be a good way to plan and rotate your merchandise.
Tracking Loyal Customer Visits: Computer vision in retail comes up with a unique solution for identifying individual customers, especially loyal customers.
Loyal customers are a store’s regular buyers and it is a well-proven principle, 80% of business comes from 20% of customers, who are regular buyers. Even, to receive genuine feedback retail stores often launches exclusive collection just for loyal customers to check.
The above concept is popularly known as Pareto’s Principal. Computer vision can identify a loyal customer visit, along with previous purchase records. Now if a loyal customer has been visiting stores frequently, but his or her purchases are not at par with visits, a drill down can be done to understand what exactly is not making the customer motivated to buy. Merchandise buyers can track these reports across stores with the help of Computer Vision..
Embracing New technological advancements like computer vision for retail is an inescapable future. Computer vision software like TORK- Retail is relentlessly processing various types of data to empower store management to enhance service and other features, and to create a unique experience for the customer.
