Posted by Gary Hubbard
on 08/9/2010
Online stores have a traffic pattern of the sites that people visit; monitoring how consumers got to the site or specific page and how much time they spent looking at products and recording what was purchased.
Owners of retail stores gather information about sales at the register every day. They have a daily record of what items or combinations of items were purchased by each customer, however they don’t have any record of where customers traveled in their store and how much time they spent shopping in a given area of the store. Imagine if that information was available to them so they could better streamline their displays based on foot traffic and shopping behaviors.
Well call it big brother watching but that information could be available soon and it will be coming from new energy efficient LED lights.
LED lights run on low dc voltage. Data also runs on low voltage. Multiple fixtures can be driven by the same power source. That power source can also be a gateway to establish the exchange of information between the fixtures and a data base. The fixture can be programmed to report its condition, its power use, sense motion, daylight and activities occurring around the fixture along with a time of day stamp. The information that is collected at the register also has a time of day stamp. The information gathered by the register can be combined with all of the fixtures in a retail store, assembled in a data base and collated to produce a shopping traffic pattern within the store, giving the store manager insight into shopping behaviors within his store similar to the information that is already available to the online store.
These smart lights would enable store managers/owners to arrange products within their store for maximum exposure to the consumer, maximizing sales and profits while conserving energy and helping to green the earth.
