At a time when the conditions for physical retail and visits to cities and shopping centres are changing dramatically, it is important to know how customers and visitors behave.
IMAS was established in Norway in 1987 and provides visitor statistics and productivity analyses. The company currently measures with various technologies and delivers data to its customers via the web-based platform Xperio. Today IMAS measures in around 60 countries and has approximately 40,000 installations.
Bumbee Labs measures visits by capturing anonymised Wi-Fi signals from smartphones, and can take measurements in both outdoor and indoor environments. Visits are measured anonymously and not at an individual level, and the measurement method is the only one of its kind to be approved by the Swedish Data Protection Authority. Bumbee Labs currently measures around 100,000 square metres of shopping streets in Swedish cities and has measured over 68 million visits this year alone.
Combining IMAS’ sensor technology with Bumbee Labs’ Wi-Fi technology will give customers unique opportunities to understand customer behaviour patterns in more depth: detailed visit data together with the ability to measure visit length, see customer flows and measure the relationship between different zones in the city, the shopping centre or the store.
The two will remain independent companies but will collaborate on projects that arise from the sales work now under way.
“The IMAS offices look forward to a strengthened collaboration with Bumbee Labs that will give our customers answers to a number of questions they have been asking recently,” says Peter Nicolaus, CEO of IMAS, adding:
“Tests in a couple of projects show that our investment in IMAS Public will also give us far more opportunities than we have had so far with current technology.”
“The collaboration with IMAS will give Bumbee Labs fantastic opportunities to expand, above all internationally, and give us the chance to learn a great deal from a company that has been active in our field for a long time,” says Karl Samuelsson, CEO of Bumbee Labs, adding:
“Our products complement each other perfectly, and the cities, shopping centres or stores that engage us will be given fantastic opportunities to get to know their customers or visitors and their visiting habits better.”