Mediar’s Greatest Risk Could Become Its Saving Grace

Hitting on Missed Opportunities

My degree and early career experience are in neuroscience. In fact, when I graduated college and was in between career paths, I looked extensively into companies that use neuroscience to explain everyday human behavior. IMotions, one company I spoke with, uses eye tracking to study shopper behavior. This is part of the emerging field of neuromarketing, the study of human psychology as it applies to consumer behavior.

Many companies are trying to capitalize on in-store customer behavioral data to keep up with e-commerce popularity. But from what I have seen, it is difficult to accomplish. Unnatural methods of data collection can disrupt shoppers and tamper with the results.

Sales data can be a decent proxy for understanding customer behavior, but it is not nearly as valuable as understanding the decision making that went into a purchase. Gustavo Lemos, founder of Mediar, classifies this data as “what could have been sold.” Mediar’s artificially intelligent software offers insight into just that by tapping into security footage and collecting shoppers’ behavioral data anonymously. The software is sold directly to brands. Then the brands go to retail partners and request to use the software with existing security camera systems.

In most cases, brands can get immediate feedback, as the software combs through months of historical data to provide insights into store layout and promotional activities. For example, Colgate increased sales conversions by 56% in select retailers after Mediar’s software suggested placing the toothpaste on an endcap (a display at the end of an aisle) near pet food. This case study illustrates one of my favorite things about neuroscience — the fact that human behavior is often incredibly illogical. This fact alone makes consumer data so valuable. It can decipher thought patterns that don’t seem to make sense.

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