Physical stores are increasingly turning to tools like Wi-Fi beacons and sophisticated cameras to bring the same data collection to the real world. The information can inform everything from marketing campaigns to store layouts, as well as help retailers compete with their online competitors. “Stores feel they have to do what websites have done and what apps have done,” says Joseph Turow, a communication professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power. “The idea is to make the store like the internet.”
B8ta, the startup Toys “R” Us partnered with, specializes in what it calls “retail as a service.” Companies that don’t have retail footprints can pay to sell their products in b8ta’s brick-and-mortar stores across the country, and in exchange receive data on how shoppers interact with them in person. The company uses cameras in the ceiling that track the amount of time consumers spend trying out goods from each brand it carries. “We’ve never hidden anything about our analytics because it’s an important part of our story,” says Vibhu Norby, b8ta’s CEO.
In Toys “R” Us case, b8ta helped the company turn its new stores into interactive marketing destinations, where kids can play Nintendo games, shoot Nerf guns, and even attend events at a dedicated in-store theater. All the while, sensors in the ceiling calculate the number of shoppers—shoppers, again, that the technology has determined are over 13—who enter the store and how long they spend with each company’s toys.
Many consumers are likely aware they’re being filmed while shopping, but may as ..
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