A computer-linked system of cameras and infrared sensors pointing at customers sounds vaguely Orwellian, but it’s actually an outgrowth of Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric (P.R.I.S.M.), a collaborative effort to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of in-store marketing.

P.R.I.S.M. made news in 2006 when major manufacturers and retailers formed the In-Store Metrics Consortium, a coalition under the aegis of the In-Store Marketing Institute that included Albertsons, Kroger, Walgreen and Wal-Mart, as well as 3M, Walt Disney, Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Miller Brewing and Procter & Gamble. Its goal was to establish a global metric for evaluating the in-store environment as marketing medium. In turn, P.R.I.S.M. would allow retailers to measure the effectiveness of in-store media.

Eventually, P.R.I.S.M. would be able to count “eyeballs” that could be measured against lift -- the amount of product sold in a given time or at a given store using promotional messages. All measurements could be compared against POS data.

The $1 million pilot study of 64 product categories was conducted during a four-week period in 10 stores representing supermarket, drug, discount and supercenter formats. Electric eye sensors installed at strategic locations recorded the number of times the beam between transmitter and receiver was broken, the direction of travel, time and date. To minimize duplicates, human observers also spent 70 hours counting shoppers.

Calculating opportunities
The consortium's theory – since confirmed by its research team – was that by predicting in-store traffic and determining compliance (whether or not signs or displays were installed), a calculation could be made on the "opportunities to see" specific communications.

Starcom MediaVest Group was brought in to apply its shopping behavior knowledge toward devising an equation to yield unduplicated impressions – the number of people who were seeing the marketing message for the first time. This calculation resembles the gross ratings points (GRP) used to estimate the potential audience for TV advertising.

The hope was that P.R.I.S.M. (which has been acquired by Nielsen) would become to retailers what Nielsen and Arbitron are to measuring television and radio audiences.

For the first time, in-store messages can be “rated” for their ability to deliver consumer reach; what remains to be determined is whether either side will exploit findings to increase or withhold slotting fees and other marketing expenditures.

“When you think about the enormous audiences that U.S retail chains are aggregating and the state of mind of the audience within those stores, there’s a fantastic opportunity for a new form of collaboration between retailers and their vendors to build traffic and increase closure rates,” says Peter Hoyt, president and founder of Hoyt Publishing and executive director of the In-Store Marketing Institute.

Multi-purpose data
Implications for both sides of the industry are myriad according to Ramon Portilla, Wal-Mart’s senior director of communication insights. Speaking earlier this year at an Advertising Research Foundation conference, Portilla said that “CPG companies can learn the value of their investments on in-store marketing programs, retailers can learn how their shoppers shop, and it enables advertising agencies to become a much bigger part of in-store media for the first time.”

Anecdotal research and informal observation shows that in-store shoppers increasingly look to stores for informational signs and displays. But there’s still a nagging question as to whether the mindset of a shopper pushing a cart through the aisles of a mass merchandise or grocery store is comparable to that of a customer watching a wide-screen TV in his living room.