Amazon Will Gather and Sell Physical Store Analytics Data to Brands

The world’s largest eCommerce player is looking to capitalize on its budding basket of physical stores by selling data to brands that details which products customers in its contactless locations touch, purchase, pass up and more.

In a blog post announcing the launch of its new Store Analytics service, Amazon said the new analytics offering will present brands with a dashboard of detailed but anonymous data that will show “how their products are discovered, considered and purchased” at an estimated 50 Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations in the United States that use its contactless Just Walk Out and Dash Cart technology.

In addition, the company will offer advertisers a deeper slice of performance metrics that will show how effective their in-store promos and digital signage are at connecting with customers and converting them into buyers — either on the spot or at a later date online.

“These data-driven Store Analytics insights 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,” the unsigned blog post stated.

These analytics will also help stores better use mobile-assisted tools, a strategy that PYMNTS’ 2022 Global Shopping Index shows improves shopper satisfaction at the physical store. The study, a collaboration with Cybersource, found that “merchants that offer smartphone-assisted shopping features provide an in-store experience that is 49% less friction-laden for consumers than nonmobile-assisted shopping.”

Get the study: Global Shopping Index

What’s in It for Customers?

The announcement comes just one week after Amazon Vice President of Physical Retail and Technology Dilip Kumar outlined the company’s decade-long investment and progress of its suite of shopping convenience tools aimed at eliminating friction, as well as plans to simplify and scale the digital systems to more locations and types of stores.

Read more: Amazon Eyes Cheaper, Smaller Version of ‘Just Walk Out’ Tech

“We’ve made ongoing inventions at all layers, including sensors, optics and machine vision algorithms, [and] as a result, we’ve reduced the number of cameras required in Just Walk Out technology-enabled stores to make them more cost-effective, smaller and capable of running deep networks locally,” Kumar said in a blog post and at the company’s re:MARS tech event.

He also noted that the diversity of retail environments and unique in-store challenges where the artificial intelligence (AI)-driven tech is being used has continuously improved and grown, noting that Just Walk Out technology is capable of serving anything from an 1,800-square-foot Amazon Go convenience store to a 40,000-square-foot Amazon Fresh grocery store, thanks to the ability of the multifaceted scanning and optical technology to account for differences in shopping behavior.

With that in mind, Amazon said in its blog post the new Store Analytics was also designed to better serve customers and “continuously improve the shopper experience” via improved store layout, product discovery, selection and more targeted promotions and ads.

Privacy and Opt-Outs

As much as brands and retailers will clearly be interested in any new and different consumer insights that Amazon’s technology may be able to glean, some customers may not want a trip to the store to also include them in a data study.

To that point, Amazon is going to great lengths to assure consumers that no personal data is included in any of the reports and that everything is anonymized and reported only as averages and percentages.

“We do not share anything that can be linked back to any individual shopper; rather only offer totals, averages and percentages about product, promotion and ad campaign performance,” Amazon said, using the percentage of times a product is taken off the shelf and then purchased as an example.

In acknowledging that “shoppers care about how their information is used and shared,” Amazon said it “put a lot of thought” into how it could make the Store Analytics service useful for brands but also protect personal privacy and has included an opt-out function for those who don’t want to be involved.