Integrating Retail and e-Commerce Using Web Analytics and Intelligent Sensors

Abstract

The consumer has a choice to shop on-line from home via a browser or mobile app or go alternatively in person to a store and accomplish a shopping goal. The latter is usually without the need of any on-line device. The two approaches are not integrated into one system. The consumer always seeks value for money to satisfy his need, also to be inspired and to have a great uplifting shopping experience. The store requires increasing profits while trying to excel in satisfying any customer requirement. The future customer will always be connected. The customer will enjoy a shopping experience, receiving personalized services leading to building loyalty and trust with the shop. This vision of the future is based on the interplay of a set of technologies which will combine the interaction of mobile data with store items in real time. This merging not only must it work well, but also be well optimized. The talk will cover the marriage of the local store together with the store electronic presence (e-shop) into one whole, smoothly operating system, from both the administrator of the system point of view and the customer. We envisage developments in physical shopping where sensors intelligently will interact, using a number of devices and techniques to assist this process, such as mobile phones or other devices using audio directions. A real time customer servicing system will be coupled to the e-shop system of the company business. The use of web Analytics and user profiling is crucial to e-shopping in identifying customer profiles and to offer vital statistics to the management for the state of the business as well as traffic, speed, throughput diagrams and faults of the e-shop in need of improvement. The talk will describe an architecture we envisage for this holistic system of managing both e-shop as well as physical shop offering good prospects for profitable management for a 24/7 service. The system requirements for real time or near real time Analytics also for the physical shopping mode, sets new requirements for the sensory interpretation and data fetching/pushing into devices. A real time customer servicing application must immediately provide offers and discounted articles in conjunction with the location of the customer in the store. Since the lifetime of the customer needs is short, the system must identify the customer profile, guess the customer need, process the need and push for an inspiring solution to this need to the customer device, before the customer has walked passed this product range, ideally. The talk will describe the status of our architecture for integrated shopping, our research on Web Analytics, Intelligent sensing and other complementary technologies and applications required for shopping experiences of the future.