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Cameras tracking shoppers: the economics of retail video surveillance

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Abstract

We examine whether video surveillance data enables improved retail performance. We analyze sales data collected from six sporting goods stores. We relate the sales data to an experiment where three stores had placebo video surveillance, and the other three stores made use of information learned in the video surveillance starting half-way through the sample period. A difference-in-differences analysis of the data indicates the use of video surveillance enables a substantial increase in total sales per hour, the number of transactions per hour, and the average size of each transaction.

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Notes

  1. “In Bid to Sway Sales, Cameras Track Shoppers”, New York Times, March 19, 2010.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Below, we do not present regressions with winsorized observations; regardless, the findings are quite similar with winsorizing.

  4. Unless otherwise indicated, these percentages are calculated relative to average levels for the entire 6 stores for the full sample period.

  5. We exclude a variable for the number of single people to avoid perfect collinearity.

  6. We exclude a variable for the number of adults to avoid perfect collinearity.

  7. We exclude a variable for the number of people traveling towards direction 1 to avoid perfect collinearity. Hence, the economic significance is relative to the benchmark of direction 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Schulich School of Business, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada

    Douglas Cumming & Sofia Johan

  2. Tilburg Law and Economics Centre (TILEC), University of Tilburg, Postbus 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Sofia Johan

Authors
  1. Douglas Cumming
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  2. Sofia Johan
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Correspondence to Douglas Cumming.

Additional information

We owe thanks to the Editor, Professor Chi Keung Marco Lau, two anonymous referees, Mehmet Belgin, Ender Demir, and the seminar participants at the 16th EBES Conference, Istanbul, 2015, for helpful comments and suggestions. We owe thanks to I3 International for providing data, and to Vy Hoang, Jack Hoang, Andy Hoang, Nada Miskovic, Grace Baba, and Felix Martinez for their helpful guidance in preparing this paper. We owe thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support.

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Cumming, D., Johan, S. Cameras tracking shoppers: the economics of retail video surveillance. Eurasian Bus Rev 5, 235–257 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40821-015-0023-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40821-015-0023-3

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