Possibly the single biggest innovation in understanding our
customers and their buying behaviour, gave out its first results this week.
Path Intelligence is a cutting edge system of tracking
customer movements around our complex market. It has been in the pipeline for
many months and results from a combined effort of management and trader
representatives. Understanding where customers enter our market, where they go,
and how long they dwell, are all crucial markers.
Making the right decisions about things like layout, trading
hours, stall mix, are greatly benefitted by hard data. For instance when we
have a special event in the market we can now track how many people attend and
what they do afterwards. Do they move into the food halls or the upper market
to generate more business for traders? Which events are most successful at
generating add-on sales?
The Path Intelligence system is in its early stages of reporting.
It will be tweaked over coming weeks and months to give us optimum results and
QVMAC Representatives are working closely with QVM Management in this
preparation. It is early days but the transition from rubbery counting methods
used in the past to new technology is exciting.
Path Intelligence has potential to give us very useful
information. What is almost as exciting is that its introduction has come about
through collaboration between management and traders working together in a
common cause – improving business levels at QVM through better understanding of
our customers.