In retail stores, research tool uses Kinect to track shoppers’ behavior

Shopperception is a Kinect-based tracking system that gathers data on shoppers' interactions with the products on retail shelves.

Nintendo’s Wii platform has already sparked applications well beyond the world of gaming, so it’s not entirely surprising to see Microsoft’s Kinect do much the same thing. Enter Shopperception, a Kinect-based tracking system that gathers data on shoppers’ interactions with the products on retail shelves. The brainchild of Argentinian development company Agile Route, Shopperception uses Kinect sensors to bring 3D spatial recognition capabilities to market research applications that have traditionally relied on costly and error-prone human observers. Brands, researchers and retailers can then continuously monitor the way shoppers interact with the products on the shelves, including metrics such as how long they spend, which products they touch, which are put back and which are ultimately purchased. They can also use the technology to compare the success of competing shelf layouts or point-of-sale promotions, for example. “Heat map” reports, meanwhile, are available to depict consumers’ interest in different products or shelves. The video below demonstrates Shopperception in action: One would be hard-pressed to think of a better way to study consumer behavior than by unobtrusively tracking real-world shoppers in a natural retail setting. Brands, retailers and researchers: one to get involved in!