Amazon has rolled out a new store-based analytics service that will give brands insights into how their products are discovered, considered and purchased at Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S.
The new analytics offering uses technology from Amazon’s Just Walk Out cashierless payment system and its Dash Cart smart shopping carts, so the service is only available at stores with one or both of those capabilities.
Store Analytics combines product location with shopper interaction and purchase data from the stores to give brands aggregated, anonymized insights about the performance of their products, promotions and ad campaigns. Brands can access these insights through a secure dashboard. The goal, according to Amazon, is to “allow brands to better understand the path to purchase for their products, helping them to evolve and refine their assortment, merchandising and advertising over time.”
Purchase behavior in stores also will be linked to online shopping activity. For example, brands will be able to see how often their product was taken off the shelf and then purchased either during that store visit or later on Amazon.com.
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Stores running Store Analytics will also use these shopper insights to make their own improvements to the shopper experience, including store layout, product selection and availability, and relevance of promotions and advertising.
Amazon made it very clear that consumer privacy was a priority as it rolls out this new offering, providing assurances that brands will never receive personal information about shoppers like their name or individual shopping history. No video or images of shoppers will be shared either, and shoppers can opt out of having their data used for Store Analytics.
“We know that shoppers care about how their information is used and shared, so we’ve put a lot of thought into how we can make this service useful for brands while continuing to protect shoppers’ privacy,” said Amazon in its announcement. “In all use cases, Store Analytics will only provide aggregated and anonymized data to brands, meaning that what is shared with brands is presented as a grouping and does not contain any personal information. We do not share anything that can be linked back to any individual shopper…only offer totals, averages, and percentages about product, promotion and ad campaign performance.”
