Retailers Who Don't Count Visitors: Misperceptions That Limit Store Performance And Profitability

By Richard Holt and David Smyth, Experian Business Strategies

Why do some retailers not count the people who visit them?

When you are trying to sell something that you feel very enthusiastic about, it can be hard to understand why everybody does not immediately buy it. So it's always useful to check up why people don't buy, to understand whether their reasoning is based on a realistic view of the facts, or on misunderstanding.

Earlier in the year AMR research asked retailers that question, with regard to visitor counting. In fact, nearly three quarters of the firms they contacted were already using visitor counting intelligence, currently introducing it, or evaluating it – see Table A. The remainder were split between retailers who had not installed the technology and had no plans to do so, and ones who had installed it but – remarkably – were making no use of it.