The retail industry is struggling, especially as consumers shift to shopping online.
Retailers are desperately trying to figure out how to salvage sales and get people into their stores and one way they’re doing that is by trying to making shopping more “personal” and tech-savvy.
According to a report from The Guardian, department store Saks utilizes facial-recognition technology. It’s ” the same platform that investigators use to identify shoplifters [also] helps retailers figure out which displays are working better, and where the customer traffic is,” video intelligence firm 3VR’s CEO, Al Shipp.
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A recent study from RichRelevance which surveyed 1,018 U.S. consumers revealed that a whopping 67% of the surveyed consumers “think it’s creepy when retailers use facial recognition technology to identify prior shopping habits and relay this information to a salesperson.”
What if that customer profile led to salespeople saying hello to you by name? It may make shoppers uncomfortable.
“How safe is it from hackers? Who has access to that information, and what other types of information is it being correlated with,” Ottawa-based privacy expert Geoff White said to The Guardian.
(Source: Business Insider)