You are wandering around the mall on Friday, heading from the Gap to FYE to Macy’s to Hickory Farms to Best Buy, not necessarily thinking about anything but getting as many great deals to justify braving the crowds as possible. But thanks to FootPath Technology, your cell phone will be pinging in with its location, and the mall will be able to mine data about traffic patterns, which stores got the most visitors, correlations between stores and more!
Sound a bit invasive? Well, if you are in one of the malls testing this out, your only option is to turn off your cell phone!
According to an article in the Chicago Tribune:
Starting on Black Friday and running through New Year’s Day, two U.S. malls — Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. — will track guests’ movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones.
While the data that’s collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers’ paths from store to store.
The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria’s Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren’t being visited?
While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they’ve used cell phones.
But obtaining that information comes with privacy concerns.
The management company of both malls, Forest City Commercial Management, says personal data is not being tracked.
“We won’t be looking at singular shoppers,” said Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, vice president of digital strategy for Forest City. “The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to.”
Still, the company is preemptively notifying customers by hanging small signs around the shopping centers. Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.
The tracking system, called FootPath Technology, works through a series of antennas positioned throughout the shopping center that capture the unique identification number assigned to each phone (similar to a computer’s IP address), and tracks its movement throughout the stores.
Head to the Chicago Tribune to read the full article!
What do you think about this – concerned, or have we become numb with all the tracking & selling that Google/Facebook/etc do on a regular basis?
Source: Chicago Tribune via Consumerist