Smart Signs

Microsoft and Intel are collaborating on technology that enables digital signs to recognize shoppers and tailor promotional messages, report Don Clark and Nick Wingfield in the Wall Street Journal (1/12/10). The hope is that the signs, which employ chips, software and cameras to enable recognition of the "age, gender and height of the people in front of them," will help stores "emulate features of online sellers such as Amazon.com, which can identify returning customers and recommend products based on their purchase histories."

As Llya Bukshteyn, a Microsoft senior director of marketing, explains: "People are getting a more personalized experience online today than they were a few years ago, but there are a lot of items you want to shop for physically." Joe Jensen of Intel, adds: "Every year retailers lose more ground to online [sellers] and they have to do something about that." So, in a retail environment, once the sign sizes up the shopper, it can "present offers for products more likely to appeal to them."

It might also send a digital coupon to the shopper’s smart phone, along with a map to the promoted item’s location in the store. The technology can also report which displays the shopper viewed, passing "that data anonymously to advertisers to help them plan marketing pitches." Intel and Microsoft won’t actually make the signs; they simply "plan in the first half of the year to specify hardware and software components that could become a standard platform for others." The signs themselves would probably be made by Hewlett-Packard and NCR, for example.