​​​​​​​Treasure Hunt

Understand customers by tracking their paths through the store.

- John Karolefski

Hannaford Supermarkets has embedded RFID chips into the shopping carts of its 68,000-squarefoot store in Bedford, N.H. The Scarborough, Maine-based grocer,a division of Ahold Delhaize, wants to track the paths of shoppers around the store.

This is just the latest example of grocers using sophisticated technology to study shopper behavior. For several years, special cameras in the ceilings recorded customer movements in many stores around the country. 

Why track shoppers?

According to Hannaford President Mike Vail, the information gathered from the chips will help improve the placement of products throughout the chain’s stores. Technologies that anonymously track shoppers can help in optimizing almost all aspects of store design, merchandising and marketing, adds Rajeev Sharma, founder and CEO of State College, Pa.-based VideoMining Corp., which studies instore shopper behavior for retailers and brands.

“Given the changing competitive landscape that is spilling over from the brick and mortar to online channels, it is especially important for grocery retailers to develop capabilities for understanding the in-store behavior of their shoppers,” explains Sharma. “In essence, these new technologies enable traditional grocery retailers to have the same level of understanding about their shoppers as online retailers such as Amazon.”

According to research by the Chicago-based trade association Shop! (formerly POPAI North America), three out of four of all purchase decisions (76 percent) are made in the store. Obviously, engaging shoppers along the path to purchase is one of the most important challenges facing retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers. Many analysts believe that the best way to do so is to start by tracking the shoppers’ paths, which provide clues about where to place products and displays in the store’s layout.