Emotion-detection technologies are emerging to help traditional retailers boost sales and better compete with online rivals.

Tech firms are rising to the challenges facing brick-and-mortar retailers, using CCTV, thermal-imaging cameras, EEG caps and other devices to get a deeper read on customers. Paris start-up Angus.ai recently field-tested its technology in a local bookshop, using software to interpret shoppers’ body language and facial expressions via a live video feed. If a customer appeared confused or dissatisfied, for example, the system would summon a clerk to assist him. Sales rose by a tenth during the eight-month test period.

Other Angus.ai clients, including Aéroports de Paris, luxury group LVMH and Carrefour, are conducting tests in research shops. In a test at a Mothercare shop in Estonia, emotion-detection software from London-based Realeyes showed that smiling shoppers spent a third more than less cheerful ones. Copenhagen-based iMotions gives retailers an EEG cap that detects brain activity, and an eye-tracking headset to note when an attractive item dilates the pupils.

Retail technology is growing increasingly sophisticated. As The Economist describes, “Thermal-imaging cameras can detect the heart rate. Wirelessly captured data from smartphone accelerometers can suggest when shoppers become fascinated (movement often stops) or are fretting over prices (a phone is repeatedly raised to search for cheaper products online).”

The technologies provide a way for brick-and-mortar retailers across the consumer goods spectrum to gain more of an advantage from data, which has been a boon to their online competitors. Tech firms are tasked with figuring out how best to collect and use “emotional data”, whether to improve packaging, displays, music or sales content and timing, says Rana June, Chief Executive of Lightwave in New York, which measures shoppers’ emotions for retailers, malls and consumer-goods companies.

Newer tech-based approaches can be more cost-effective than traditional shopper interviews. They also have an edge over conventional market research, as they do more to address the crucial emotional component of shopping. As Jeff Hershey, EVP of VideoMining, a Pennsylvania firm whose software analyses store video, says: “The key is in tracking the unconscious things that shoppers do.”

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