Facial recognition is tracking customers as they shop in stores, tech company says
Facial recognition is tracking customers as they shop in
stores, tech company says
Retailers and malls are installing technology to track
customers and collect data about consumer demographics, an IT company says
Facial recognition technology is used to identify a
customer's gender, age and ethnicity, according to Mark Lunt, group managing
director at Jardine OneSolution
Data can help identify customers for offline retailers:
executive
Annie Lin, Special to CNBC Published 12 Hours Ago CNBC.com
9:39 PM ET Tue, 21 Nov 2017 | 02:14
Retailers are using facial recognition to collect data
about customers as they shop in stores, according to an IT company with insight
into the space.
"One of the big things brick-and-mortar retailers
are getting into now is knowing their customers ... tracking who's entering
their mall and how they're behaving," said Mark Lunt, group managing
director at Asia-based Jardine OneSolution.
JOS works with the retail sector on facial recognition to
profile customers that enter and track their movements.
The data collected include "how many people are
coming in, age, ethnicity, gender — it's all about knowing the foot traffic
better and trying to serve more appropriate offers to those customers,"
Lunt said.
Customer identities are kept anonymous and it might even
benefit shopping experiences in the long run. According to JOS, its projects
include adjusting store music to coincide with the customer's mood.
However, there are limitations for retailers on how the
accumulated data is being used and protected.
"Technology is not the barrier to the systems being
implemented, it's privacy concerns, it's cultural concerns," said Lunt.
The idea of having sensors and cameras to collect data
about shoppers is the defining privacy issue of the age, he said, explaining that
retailers are investing considerable amounts of money into securing data and
preventing data breaches.
In light of news about Uber's recent data breach, Lunt
said, businesses have to be incredibly sensitive. At the same time, customers
should be careful about with whom they're entrusting their data.
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