1. Optimizing customer
flow gives higher
revenue and improved
customer satisfaction !
Humanlink Finland Oy
VMT

2. Mission: Go to H&M and buy a pair of jeans
Women Man
Man Women
Time: 6 min. Time: 3 hr. 26 min.
Cost:199,- Cost:4 398,-

3. Topics to be covered
• Why understand customer movement
• Customer cases:
 Gas stations
 Telecom concept store
 Pharmacies
 Convenient store
 Consumer electronics
• Customer Tracking Technology

4. Why understand customer movements ?
• Marketing budget hits the cealing
• There will be investments in new
information channels.
• Influence directly on customers buying
behaviour
• Find the cold and warm spots in a store
• Competition regarding product placing
increases

5. Why understand customer movements ?
• Put campaign areas and impuls
products where the customers
are
• Get to know what the
customers see and what they
react to
• Customers demand more
modern design
• Improve customer satisfaction

6. How to get needed information?
• Do exit interviews of the customers regularly
• Use customer counters
• Use customer tracking
Best of all – use a combination of the three.

7. Customer Tracking
Technology
• We use a wireless digital pen with a
built-in camera that takes more than
120 pictures per second in combination
with a intelligent sheet of paper.”The
Anoto pattern”
• Printing this dot pattern on the paper
makes it possible for the digital pen’s
built-in camera to detect pen strokes
and record handwriting that can then be
stored and sent digitally.
• With this tool the customer’s path
through the store is registered. When
the customer tracking period is over,
results are reported and analyzed.
• The customer path can be viewed
online in realtime in our “Tracking
portal”

8. Customer cases
• Gas stations
• Telecom Concept Store
• Pharmacies
• Convenient store
• Consumer electronics

9. Case – Gas station
• Background and goals
 Looking at:
 How customers move
 Where do the customers stop
 Do the customers purchase anything
 This will contribute to a design and actions so:
 The customers stay longer in the shop
 The customers could purchase more items
 The customer will choose this station also at their next visit.
 When redesigning the station valuable information is gathered.

10. Gas station
project
• The station had 2 entrances
• 3 days with observations
• 140 observations
• Average stops pr customer is 1,65
• Average time in station is 1 min and 6 sec
• 80% choose entrance close to the cashier
• Customers walk in and out - no walk around
• 80% ”looses” the possibility to buy impulse
products
Cashier

11. Gas station In
Easy changes
• From two to one entrances
Campaign area/
• 80% more customers will pass campaign Impuls products
areas/impulse products.
Result
Out
• Time in shop more than doubled
• Revenue increased by almost 30%

12. Case – Telecom Concept store
• Background and goals
 Looking at:
 How customers move?
 Where do the customers stop?
 Do the customers purchase anything?
 Do the customers use “Self-Service” areas?
 Does this “concept store” work according to goals?
 This will give:
 Valuable information in where to place campaign areas and cashier
 Valuable information when designing next shop

13. Campaign
Telecom concept store Productarea/
Self service shelves
Perceived customer movements
• Traditional to ”the right” movement.
• The customer should pick products
themselves
• Campaign area easy to reach Productarea/
Self service shelves
• Easy to move around

14. Telecom concept store
Actual customer movements
• Several barriers
• Behind the cashier phenomena
• The perceived pathway is to narrow.
• Campaign areas difficult to reach

15. Telecom concept store
Change customer movements
• Move the cashier
• Move campaign area to achieve better effect of
campaign products
• Get more open areas
• Move perceived barriers
• Get full effect of normal ”to the right” movements
and get full effect of all ”Self-Service” areas.

16. Case – Pharmacies
• Background and goals
 The pharmacy chain wish to complete customer flow analysis in some of their pharmacies
to learn more about customer behavior in their pharmacies, and use this knowledge to
prepare pharmacists with regard to optimal customer flow, the trade position, and
communication and customer care.
 The result will be used for input and discussion points in the store layout and marketing
division. The results will be documented in a "best practice" manual for use by individual
pharmacies.

17. Pharmacies
• Observation areas chosen based on the needs to
understand the customers movement regarding
staffed service areas and areas where the
customer choose products themself.
• 600 observations in 6 different pharmacies in 3
days.
• We were looking for all areas for improvements
• Small changes gave huge results
Cold zones Hot zones

18. Gerd Byremoen, Marketing manager,
Vitusapotek Norway (Celesio Norway)
We increased sales by 36% in one month in one of
our pilot study shops. After having used the analysis
from the customer flow project, we changed the
furnishing and product placement and we made the
shop more tempting for the customers

19. Case – Convenient store
• Background and goals
 The largest chain for Video/Movie rental (450 stores in Norway) experience
that they are loosing customer to new methods like video on demand,
streaming and internet stores.
 They wanted to see if they changed the customer flow in the store helped in
order to get higher impulse sales.
 In understanding the customer flow the chain will use the result as discussion
when designing new stores. The results will be documented in a "best
practice" manual for use by individual stores.

20. Convenient store
Change customer movements
• All customers moved to the right
• Poor circulation in store
• Left part of store is a cold zone
• Changed floor layout
• Changed categorizing
• This totaly changed the customer flow
• Increased sales by 11%
• Exit interviews showed more satisfied
customers

21. Case – Consumer Electronics
• Reason for customer tracking
 Quality check of new store
 Do the new layout work as planned?
 Will open layout reduce or increase circulation?
 Will customers turn right as planned?
 Find Hot & cold areas
Typical layout from the 1990s

22. Old New

23. Consumer Electronics
Results
• Time in store is significantly longer in the new layout. The customers are
in average 15.5 minutes versus about 10 minutes in the old layout.
• Customers stop in average in twice as many zones in the new layout
• Being able to move freely around the room and not be bound by forced
walking path increases the average time the customer is in the shop and
thus the likelihood of increased revenues.
• We also see that there are far fewer cold zones in the new store - Better
circulation by "open shop".
• Customer satisfaction raised by more than 20%

24. Lets look at the technology

25. What does a better customer flow give you?
• Customers will stay longer in the store
• Customers will buy more
• Customer satisfaction improves
• Customers enjoy being in the store
• Customers will come back
• Customers will become a good reference

26. ….which again will give you
improved revenue and improved
customer satisfaction….

27. To understand customer movement, is to
understand what happens next ?

28. Thank you
Any questions ?