The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) has signed a global sponsorship agreement with shopper location analytics company Path Intelligence. This exciting agreement fuses ICSC’s established and extensive network and resources with Path Intelligence’s innovative vision for the future of shopping malls.
As the retail real estate sphere evolves in the digital age, there is a growing emphasis on the shopping experience and the need to deliver that ‘something’ that cannot be achieved online. Every decision a shopping center makes – whether it’s selecting the next brand for a vacant unit or getting the overall brand mix right; driving tenant performance or arranging a successful promotion – directly contributes to its success in delivering better shopping experiences, and in turn achieving their financial goals.
The world’s leading shopping centers now share the same urgent need for insights that will help them provide those experiences. It’s an area of significant focus and investment for many of the world’s leading property owners.
“We seek to sign sponsors through our global partnership program that have the potential to significantly enhance the shopping center industry,” said Michael Kercheval, ICSC president and CEO. “ICSC believes that the agreement with Path Intelligence will help drive more focus and discussion amongst our industry on the benefits of location analytics, big-data and the progression beyond basic shopper analytics – something that will help keep our industry moving forward.”
As Matthew Parker, CEO of Path Intelligence, explains, “The world’s best shopping centers deliver a fresh experience to shoppers. They compete for every dollar in a marketplace with increasingly more consumer options than ever before. It is no secret they focus obsessively on getting this right, and starting to gather deep insight into visitor behaviors to continuously tune their offer is paramount. We know collecting and understanding this data can be complex and expensive - that’s where we can help. This partnership enables us to share our vision – one where shopping center decisions, big and small, are based on real shopper behaviors. It’s where both we and the ICSC believe future success lies.”
In 2004, Path Intelligence introduced a revolutionary technology for mapping mobile phones through cellphone signals. Today, Path Intelligence’s aggregation of three cellphone signals – cellular, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi – gives them an understanding of shopper behavior that is unachievable anywhere else. By augmenting this data with a wide variety of other data sources, including store sales, parking lot, weather and trade area information, determines not just where shoppers go, but also how long they spend there, what they spend and where they go next – enabling informed decision-making that can optimize tenant protection and drive asset value across entire portfolios.
To further boost their capabilities, Path Intelligence recently announced their decision to develop a big data hub (PI+) to amalgamate data from multiple sources, including customers and partner networks. In addition, Path also announced the development of a new analytics platform (PIX), which will maximize the capabilities of the hub. Both will be launched later this year.
Source: International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
