Hikvision has developed a smart retail solution which provides comprehensive CCTV security to protect staff and customers and assist in loss prevention. It also features data collection and analytics for enhancing business value. Further, it will perform three intelligent functions for retail support – “people counting” to track customer traffic and volume, “heat mapping” to know the popularity of goods in the shopping area, and “queue detection” to monitor the queuing situation in real time.
Hikvision’s dual-lens people-counting camera provides accurate customer counting and generates customer flow trends to evaluate performance and strategic initiatives. Featuring binocular stereo vision, 3D people detection, and height filtering technologies, the camera is able to accurately distinguish human beings from non-human objects in the background. By analysing customer flow data, store management can optimise workforce allocation for higher profits and ensure better customer service. Store managers can also draw up staff schedules strategically for peak and off-peak hours. Further, they can also develop strategic marketing activities to attract customers by analysing the data of incoming rates.
With Hikvision’s heat mapping function, retailers can determine the amount of time shoppers spend in specific areas of a store, identify hotspots and dead zones, and count the number of people who actually shop for specific products, rather than just casually walk by. The company’s fisheye cameras, equipped with a heat mapping function, not only capture a panoramic high definition image but also provide information about heat conditions in different regions within a store.
Hikvision’s queue detection cameras can monitor the queuing situation in real time. First, the cameras count the number of people in each queue and then track the dwell time of each customer. Once it is found that the number of people in queue is too high, or the average dwell time of customers is too long, an alarm will be triggered to prompt a response. Store management will be reminded to open checkout windows to reduce waiting time, and improve transaction efficiency and the entire shopping experience.
Hikvision’s smart retail solutions will help in the technological transformation of the retail market by making use of data to support management and operations.