Wipro. “But our experience is that younger people who
have grown up with social media are very willing to part
with personal information for better, more targeted offers.”
Retailers are also employing technology behind the
scenes to enhance the shopping experience – and improve
their profits as well. Eye tracking – where a person’s gaze
can be monitored and the length of time they look at an
object or what attracts their attention first is measured – is
already used by large firms such as Unilever and Procter
&
Gamble to understand why we prefer particular pack
designs when we are buying goods such as toiletries.
While there is no evidence to suggest that shoppers’
eyes are tracked without their knowledge, European
supermarkets and beauty stores already often base their
shop design on insights gained by official eye-tracking
research that relies on human observation.
CCTV is another tool being used to track consumer
behaviour. Venugopala says it will soon be used to
combat “excessive dwell time” – looking at high-priced
items such as TV and multimedia products without
buying. Luxury goods and fashion retailers in London,
Paris and Berlin currently study shoppers’ movements
via in-store cameras. They claim this helps them
understand their customers better – for instance,
whether a particular colour is popular – but while
there’s no doubt innovations such as this can ultimately
enhance shopping experiences for consumers, there are,
understandably, fears that this sort of retail surveillance
has echoes of Big Brother.
David Martin, co-founder of the international retail-
design agency MWorldwide, believes consumers have
only themselves to blame. “The driver behind all this IT
innovation is the convergence of online and offline worlds,
and the fact that consumers want to shop via a multitude of
different channels, particularly their mobiles, of course.
B U S I N E S S 2 . 0
How important is it for
new businesses to make
technology work for them?
We asked experts at two of Europe’s top
business schools to discuss the pros and
cons of these new advances.
“
Europe’s future business leaders will
be those who can manage technology,
even if they themselves are technologically
illiterate,” says Nick Barniville, MBA
director at the Berlin-based European
School of Management and Technology,
which was ranked 16th in the world’s top
business schools by the Financial Times
in 2012. After initially viewing advances
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