Nielsen And RetailNext Team Up To Track Foot Traffic

Nielsen and RetailNext have joined hands to provide retail data insights using RetailNext’s mapping technology for Nielsen’s client base, which constitutes a wide spectrum of stores ranging from retail to drug.

The partnership aims at underpinning Nielsen’s expertise in promotion, pricing, sales performance and merchandising knowledge with RetailNext’s prowess in in-store analytics.

RetailNext, a San Jose, California-based retail analytics company uses an amalgam of visual data obtained from cameras and mobile technology to measure foot traffic and analyze shoppers’ activity in a brick-and-mortar setting.

Teaming up, the companies hope to develop granular insight into shoppers’ behavior and use it to boost retail sales and shopper loyalty.

“We are excited about deepening our relationship with Nielsen, and the combined power of Nielsen’s long-established data streams with RetailNext’s rich insight into in-store shopper activity delivers a unique value proposition to clients of both firms,” said Alexei Agratchev, CEO and co-founder of RetailNext.

The partnership comes at a time when retailers are grappling with declining foot traffic in stores as mobile and online shopping continues to gain popularity among millennial shoppers.

Retail sales and foot traffic saw an average decline of 7.7 percent in January 2015 compared to the same time period in 2014, according to the Retail Pulse report released by RetailNext.

“[Starting the year] we’re seeing the same sort of trends we saw throughout 2014. The fiscal year closed with the same trends of traffic and sales being down. Conversion was very consistent, up .2 percentage points, and average transaction value (ATV) and sales per shopper were essentially flat,” RetailNext’s head of business analytics Chitra Balasubramanian told PYMNTS in a recent interview.

“As we have seen throughout 2014, we believe these trends are signaling the strength of other channels. For retailers as a whole, they need to look at all the channels and do more to bridge those channels together,” she said.