For eight months up to this April, a French bookstore chain had video in a Paris shop fed to software that examines shoppers' movements and facial expressions for surprise, dissatisfaction, confusion or hesitation. When a shopper walked to the end of an aisle (走廊) only to return with confusion to a bookshelf, the software immediately messaged clerks, who went to help. Sales rose by a tenth.
This could be a chance, some say, for physical retailers (零售商) to trim the advantage that data have long given online sellers. A race is on to work out how best to collect and use emotions data, be it to improve packaging, displays, music, or the content, says Rana June, chief executive of a firm in New York called Lightwave. It measures shoppers' emotions for consumer-goods firms.
Not everyone is impressed. Nielsen, a consumer research company, views using technology to work out shoppers' emotions unfavorably. "It is a little annoying," says Ricardo Gutierrez, head of shopper insights at Nielsen Colombia in Bogota.
But it is much cheaper. Nielsen charges roughly $10,000 to interview 25 shoppers about three products. Angus.ai, the Paris startup behind the technology, charges just £59 ($66) a month per camera. What's more, conventional market research can mislead. People typically "edit" responses to make themselves sound sensible, when purchases are often driven by subconscious (潜意识地) emotions. And surveys can also ask the wrong questions - such as how much people like a product when what really matters is whether, say, it makes them feel attractive.
The notion of "retail therapy (疗法)", consumers driven to spend when they are feeling blue, is an obvious example of shopping's emotional side. Whichever store is the first to work out how to spot mildly depressed customers could make big money.
