Sanjay Mittal, CEO The fast evolving and competitive retail landscape, with its ever-expanding options for consumers and shoppers, demands retailers and manufacturers to have the right offerings at the right place at the right time. “The retail landscape would be impossible to navigate without accurate, timely information about shoppers, and that’s where VideoMining acts as the in-store analytics solution provider,” begins Sanjay Mittal, CEO, VideoMining. Befitting the name, the firm pioneered the use of video to study shopper behavior and characteristics. “Our patented video technology tracks and measures millions of shopping trips, to unearth or mine the hidden ‘nuggets’ of critical information from video to better understand the shopper’s behavior,” exclaims Mittal. The firm’s patents on demographic identification from images: age, gender, and ethnicity provide critical information in the segmentation of users and analytics based on such segmentation.
The core expertise of VideoMining is rooted in its ‘in-store behavior analytics’ for consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers and retailers. “Our platform combines shopper behavior data measured with multiple sensor technologies with transaction data, store layouts and planograms to create detailed insights on shoppers from the time they enter the store to their exit. The omni-sensor platform combines a hi-res camera, wifi access point, and beacon along with on-board image processing capabilities that works in an IoT architecture. “Leveraging our powerful and cost effective solution enables retailers to instrument all their stores to reach each and every shopper,” exclaims Mittal.
Used by CPG manufacturers, ShopperFirst enables them to make effective decisions about product packaging and placement in the aisles, new product introductions, evaluating the effectiveness of their trade promotions, and shopper marketing investments. With ShopperFirst, VideoMining is bringing their in-store analytics platform online, delivering performance analytics for every stage of the in-store path-to-purchase funnel and providing insight into how shopper segments respond throughout those stages.
ShopperFirst, utilizes a patented suite of sensing technologies to capture in-depth shopper behavior data
“Similarly, our heatmaps and differential heatmaps help find key traffic patterns that are critical in this regard,” extols Mittal.
For the year ahead, VideoMining is set to launch several exciting ShopperFirst programs. The first of these programs builds on VideoMining's highly successful annual Grocery Shopper Insights (GSI) MegaStudy program, offering continuous year-round tracking, where unique data on shopper behavior and characteristics powers a variety of analytics applications.
Delivering a complete range of in-store solutions, the firms Prescriptive Analytics Engine (PAE) proffers value beyond data reporting and insights delivery to provide manufacturers and retailers with directional advice and specific guidance as to best practices and next steps aimed at getting results. “We combine our unique in-store shopper behavior and segmentation data with other key data sources, and apply proprietary analytics backed by years of industry expertise to deliver a timely and in-context roadmap to success for our clients,” says Mittal.
Squarely focused on the CPG Retail space, VideoMining has invested heavily in mastering the nuances of this complicated collaborative space. “With our continued focus on innovation to meet the specific needs of CPG and Retail space, we have created and deployed technology to get detailed measurements about in-store shopper behavior and then use these insights to help both retailers and CPG optimize their marketing and merchandizing decisions,” mentions Mittal.
“Our long term vision is to move beyond a panel of stores to have a presence in every store such that we can not only understand shopper behavior but in real-time influence their decision,” says Mittal. A huge step toward this goal is VideoMining’s recent shift from a yearly snapshot view of shopper behavior to continuous monitoring of in-store behavior.
