Analyzing the digital society by tracking mobile customer devices

Abstract

Nowadays, most people use smartphones or tablets for personal or commercial purposes in their daily life. Such mobile devices are electronic all-rounders equipped with several sensors and communication interfaces, e. g., Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Both communication systems leak information to the surroundings during operation which can be used for monitoring customers and analyzing their behavior in an area of interest. This article shortly describes techniques for tracking mobile customer devices and identifies potentials and limitations for analyzing the digital society based on mobile tracking data. Both scientific papers and commercial projects are investigated focusing on trends for the digitalization of the retail industry. Furthermore, different startups currently working in the field of retail analytics are presented and compared in terms of their unique selling point (usp) and future oriented projects. Overall, this book chapter presents a compact overview of state-of-the art techniques and future works for analyzing the digital society by tracking mobile customer devices.