• by Philip Rosenstein , January 13, 2017

Retail technology company Cloverleaf announced on Thursday the release of shelfPoint, a dynamic shelf solution for brick-and-mortar locations, which uses artificial intelligence to capture data on customer engagement and sentiment.

The emergence of online shopping has not much diminished in-store traffic, with Forrester predicting 83% of purchases being made in physical stores in 2017. Retailers, however, face difficulties generating actionable customer data.

“Online retail has demonstrated how powerful data insights can be,” said Gordon Davidson, founder and CEO of Cloverleaf. “We’ve designed a solution to help retailers capture this level of data by attracting, engaging and converting customers in one of the most underutilized yet powerful areas in the store: the shelf. Early pilots have already shown double-digit sales uplift and we’re excited to roll it out to retailers nationwide.”

While not yet mobile-enabled, that “ability is on our roadmap. Over time we want the retailer to be able to target on these devices effectively in-store,” Jan Murley, chief strategy and marketing advisor at Cloverleaf, told Real-Time Daily.

ShelfPoint features include:

-- Emotional Artificial Intelligence Technology: In partnership with Affectiva, shelfPoint can determine a shopper’s facial expressions and overall sentiment, making a point not to store images.

-- Demographic Capture Capabilities: shelfPoint’s optical sensors gather anonymous shopper demographic data like age, general ethnic group and gender.

-- Modern Display: Dynamic high-definition LCD strips display miniaturized marketing campaigns that help entice shoppers based on engagement level and physical distance.