The goal is to make people stay in shops for longer periods of time, and perhaps buy more. The system controls all space variables, such as temperature or humidity, because every detail matters. The system was developed to detect problems (stuffy air, poorly located or unpleasant staff, and loud music) and is now being used in shops from Levi's, G-Star Raw, Dockers or Nike.

Seeplus is the name of the platform developed by RetailPro, and it was the result of a consortium that brought together the company InovRetail, INESC TEC (INESC Technology and Science), the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) and the Porto School of Engineering (ISEP).

With funding over a half a million euros, the project started being developed by the end of 2012. The idea is to bring in more clients and to improve service in shops.

Pedro Carvalho, researcher at INESC TEC, explains the process: “In order to understand the reasons that cause consumers to stay in shops for longer or shorter periods of time, we used spatial location tools with video, through Bluetooth or Wifi, and the different sensing variables such as temperature, humidity, noise, light or human resources, everything that can affect the behaviour of consumers in a certain physical space.” The INESC TEC researcher led the RETAILPRO, together with Luís Corte-Real.

The platform can be used in two ways: as a service, which includes the installation at the shop, data analysis and reports with the final results; or as a product, which means that the client or shopkeeper can purchase the entire system, including the software, and do everything independently.

Sábado, 11 March 2015