Anonymised and aggregated mobile network data used to calculate number of people visiting an area aims to help retailers track footfall

Anonymised and aggregated mobile network data used to calculate number of people visiting an area aims to help retailers track footfall

Following the launch of ‘Smart Steps’ by Telefónica Dynamic Insights in the UK late last year, Retail Technology investigated how it supersedes traditional footfall tracking technologies.

There are a number of visitor movement or customer footfall tracking systems available that use infrared sensors to monitor body heat density, or single entrance counters with reflective beam, proximity or pressure sensors for example. Linked to electronic point-of-sale systems, the data produced can be used to plan store, staffing and merchandising operations more effectively.

Mobilising telecoms data

As part of the Telefónica group, the company behind Smart Steps is part of a new breed of people counting systems that rely on mobile data to provide more in-depth measurement and understanding of the number of people visiting an area.

Co-branded with GfK, Telefónica Dynamic Insights’ market research partner, and jointly distributed by both companies, Smart Steps uses anonymised and aggregated mobile network data to provide extrapolated trends about footfall by time, gender, and age.

While Telefonica Dynamic Insights provides insights extracted from anonymised and aggregated data, it does not sell personal information. An individual customer’s identity is removed. Their age and gender is then aggregated with the same information derived from other customers’ anonymised data. Trends are extrapolated from the combined data. There is no disclosure of any personal information, individuals are not tracked, and the company is at pains to state it will never be possible to identify individual customers.

Turning big data into opportunity

Smart Steps is launching in the UK and other countries in the Telefónica group will follow. Steve Alden, Telefónica Digital Insights chief executive, spoke exclusively to Retail Technology about the launch.

He explained how Telefónica has a track record of managing large amounts of data – it is one of the core skills of our business. “We use data to manage our business more effectively,” he said. “Now we will use mobile network data to provide companies and public sector organisations around the world with analytical insights that enable them to become more effective.

“Smart Steps measures actual consumer behaviour instead of perceived behaviour,” he continued. “Look at London this year. We had High Street retailers saying that the weather and the Olympics suppressed their trading, and yet other retailers said that it was a good summer.

“Smart Steps brings objective insight into this debate. As a retailer, if the area that your shop is in is getting busier, yet your own shop is getting quieter, the proposition needs to change. Or, if the area of your shop is getting quieter, and trade is declining, then what other areas are winning this traffic away? Or is this reduction in footfall everywhere so it really is the weather or have you just been unlucky with local road works? Smart Steps will help retailers to understand footfall across their estate, tailor product promotions in existing stores and determine the best locations and formats for new stores.”

Size and scale delivered in real time

Telefónica’soperating businesses (O2 in the UK) currently captures this data in order to provide its services. The mobile network regularly communicates with each customer’s phone – for example when and where a call is initiated or a call is terminated. Using records of when and where phones communicate with the network and proprietary algorithms enables the company to calculate the size and movements of anonymous crowds of people.

Alden added that the data is updated far more regularly than traditional tools. “We can provide near real-time data for every hour of every day of the week. Whereas traditional techniques (like people standing in shop door ways with clickers or people in the High Street with a clipboard, for instance) take place far less frequently – often as little as once a week or once a month. We have a bigger sample size. It is updated far more regularly, and where as traditional techniques just provide a count of the number of people we can provide high level demographics – for example, age and gender breakdown.”

End users access the tool using an online portal, which uses an interface that is Google maps. While Alden said that he couldn’t name customers for confidentiality reasons, he added that 12 major UK retailers are trialling it. “We can’t name them but they are all household names,” he said.