How stores track your shopping behavior | Ray Burke | TEDxIndianapolis

thank you very much I'm delighted to be here today well I wanted to share with you a little bit about my background and and my interest in watching Shoppers okay so to understand my fascination with this we need to go back to my first job which was at Cardinal Camera Store so I was hired as a salesperson when I was 16 years old and this was my dream job because I loved photography and I really enjoyed interacting with with people but I discovered that the salespeople in this store worked on commission and it actually turned out to be very competitive so we'd stand at these glass counters and uh customers would pull up in front of the store and they'd walk in and we' try to size them up and see you know who are The Big Spenders and you know you you get different types of Shoppers who come in so one type of customer they were just there to browse and it didn't matter how much time you spent with them or how many cameras you showed them if they were going to buy anything they were going to go to the discount store that was down the street other people would come in and they were there just to pick up some film or some photo processing but there was a third group of Shoppers and they had bigger plans in mind they may have had a wedding that was coming up or a vacation or a birthday party I remember one occasion where we're standing there and this old truck this pickup truck pulls up in front of the store and and the back was filled with junk and and this guy gets out and he comes into the store and it looks like he hadn't showered in a week and the other salespeople they scattered so but I saw when he came into the store that he was walking with intention and his eyes went to a display case that had some of the nice cameras and we struck up a conversation and I learned that his wife was expecting their first child and they wanted to get some really nice pictures and they've been saving up for this and so we looked at some different equipment and he ended up getting some nice nice gear so I learned from this experience the value in watching Shoppers now I still watch Shoppers today but I have more sophisticated tools for example at the Kelly school's customer interface lab we have uh tools that allow us to simulate the shopping experience uh in some cases we uh actually build out part of a store with shelf fixtures and checkout lanes and we use eye tracking technology uh in others we use Virtual Reality simulations to recreate the appearance of the store so for example we've simulated uh Mass retail stores and grocery stores uh specialty retail stores so this is an example of a uh a gourmet food and wine shop now the advantage of the lab is you've got a lot of control and a lot of flexibility but in some cases we actually have to go into the stores bring the lab into the store to study Shoppers in their natural environment now we will in some cases use you know you go into the stores and you see the security cameras that are used for property loss prevention uh We've we've used the data collected from those cameras um we've also uh uh looked at Shopper Behavior using our own cameras in the store that uh use 3D imaging so we can measure not just where the Shopper is standing but their their skeleton position where they're reaching where their head is facing their facial expressions and we have software that automates the coding of this and and is able to capture this information anonymously now occasionally you'll read stories about this kind of tracking and in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times and they tend to have headlines like big brother is watching us or uh spying in the aisles and so they have a very negative tone so you might ask you know Rey why do you spend so much time and energy watching Shoppers especially when there are these legitimate concerns about consumer privacy and the reason is because I believe that through these insights you can improve the customer experience you can increase customer satisfaction and increase business performance so how do we do this well if we watch what people buy we can infer what their needs and desires are and even anticipate what those needs will be in the future if we watch Shoppers we can see the points of Engagement in the shopping process and the and the points of friction the obstacles to purchase and then we can modify the experience and and improve the shopping experience and and observe Shoppers Behavior so our goal here is to optimize the shopability of the store let me give you an example uh from some research that we've done with uh uh Marsh supermarkets now Marsh is right here in Indianapolis and they've actually been very Innovative in their use of Technology um 40 years ago Marsh was the first retailer to use the UPC scanners so you know when you go into the store and you check out now originally they used those to impre improve operational efficiency at checkout but that information is captured and it provides a rich source of of consumer research so let's take a look at uh a receipt from a shopper what can you learn just by watching what people purchase well this Shopper they picked up some sliced turkey this just a few weeks ago some roma tomatoes and some peaches okay well because this person uses a customer loyalty card and most Shoppers do we can track their purchases over time so again back in March a week later and what's this person buying some sliced turkey some peaches and some roma tomatoes okay so if we want to build the Loyalty if we want to reward this Shopper for their loyalty we can send them we we know their contact information we have their uh information from the Loyalty program we can send them a a mailer for uh peaches we know they like that maybe send them some coupons even give them a recipe it turns out that about 85% of what you buy is basically the same from one week to the next but we can learn more than just people's preferences for individual products so now let's go to k Kook Iowa and this is a shopper who visited a Walmart and they picked up some Diet Pepsi an Atkins bar and some slim fast okay so it looks like someone's counting calories here okay but you wonder they're also buying Cheetos and ice cream and popsicles okay maybe they have got kids in the in the family okay well if you look just a few days later they're back in Walmart again and they're buying major league baseball cards so it does look maybe like they have a child at least one child in the house and they're buying dog treats okay so it looks like they might have a dog as well a few days later they're back in the store and they're getting some fishing hooks so they like to fish and they're buying marine oil so they actually have a boat so as you look across these transactions you start to get a picture of the household the profile of the Shopper the DNA that's going to uh uh Drve their purchases in the in the future now it's not enough just to know what people's needs and desires are we also need to understand how that interacts with the store environment so we've done research where we approach Shoppers and ask them to wear a special pair of glasses that have a little camera and and it tracks where they're looking as they walk through the store so what do shoppers actually see as they go through well it looks like they're on roller skates right I mean this is the actual speed that the Shopper goes through they have certain products in mind they see what they're looking for grab it boom they're on to the next product category okay so what does Shoppers actually see as they navigate through the store will they tend to scan horizontally about 4T off the floor so this is a heat map that shows the the concentration of visual attention they notice special displays so like a two for one promotion for potatoes or inil displays they they spend two to four times the amount of time looking at these than the surrounding products so the store environment has an influence but also their goals have a powerful influence on their visual attention so let's say that you're in the you're not actually shopping for produce on this visit you tend to look towards the center of the display on the other hand if you're shopping for tomatoes this is what you see or if you're strolling past the bakery and you're not shopping for uh Donuts this is what you see if you're shopping for donuts it's like the whole display case lights up right so how can we help Shoppers to find what they're looking for in the store to connect what's in their mind with what's physically available so we've done these simulation studies where we manipulate the Shelf displays and measure the amount of time it takes for Shoppers to find the products so let's say that you're looking for frosted Cheerios and you just have the name frosted Cheerios in mind takes you about 9. 4 seconds to find the product on the shelf on the other hand if you have a picture of the product in mind only takes 2. 5 seconds to locate the product or let's say we pick a different product this is golden grams now if you have a picture of the product in mind takes you about 5.

7 seconds to find the product but there are other products on the Shelf with a similar appearance Cheerios are also in a gold package shredded wheight what if we ask you to find a product that's more distinctive like Apple Jacks in the green package only takes you 1. 1 seconds to find it now one of the tools that the retailer has to to help you to find products is the number of shelf facings how much space they allocate to products on the Shelf if we look at post brand flakes um with two facings two packages that are visible it takes about 3. 3 seconds to find the product if we expand the amount of space that's allocated to this product it it's reduced to 2.

1 seconds even how straight the shelves are in the store influences the Shopper's ability to find things so you know you go into the store it's a Saturday afternoon and things look really picked over if you're looking for Golden grams in this situation takes about 8. 2 seconds to find the product but just by straightening the shelves we're able to reduce that to 5.