“Precision retailing” would provide a key area of business investment during the coming year said Mr. McConaghy, the executive director of Australian people counting specialist Beonic. Before joining Beonic, Mr. McConaghy was a board director with one of the world’s leading country economic forecasters, The Economist Intelligence Unit, based in London.

Mr. McConaghy said 2004 was the first year in a decade that Australia’s Reserve Bank had not changed interest rates at all. “Rates are more likely to go up than down, which will put our indebted nation in a real squeeze,” he said. “People are likely to remain confident, but will probably spend less money when they shop. Reduced discretionary spend per consumer means retailers need to be more effective to get the same profit level.”

Precision retailing uses accurate people counting reports to track how effective a retailer has been in converting visitors into actual customers. In supermarkets, Beonic people counters can track how many people pass a product compared to how many actually buy it. Retailers can then change displays, advertising and promotions to improve their sales conversion rate.

Mr. McConaghy said large retailers were looking for further productivity gains from their expensive point-of-sale systems. “This improvement can be delivered by complementary technologies such as people counting and people traffic flow monitoring,” he said.

“In large retail groups and shopping centres, there is a trend towards centralisation of information. This is leading to a greater recognition of the unique value delivered by Beonic in aiding retailers to measure their lost sales potential in store. Beonic reports can tell them how much they are not selling.”

Beonic’s world-leading customer intelligence system assists retailers to learn how to convert store visitors into actual customers. Beonic’s accurate people counting technology integrates with its smart software to measure the relationship between visitor numbers and actual sales. Beonic reports equip retailers to make more effective decisions about marketing, merchandising and service levels, leading to happier customers, more sales and greater profit.

Clients using Beonic technology include IKEA, Hutchison “3” stores, Angus & Robertson Bookshops, Jeans West and Harvey Norman as well as Lend Lease, AMP, Gandel and Centro shopping centres, the Sydney Opera House, Sydney's Queen Victoria Building and Melbourne’s Federation Square.

Mr. McConaghy said 2005 would see retailers broaden their focus from supply chain management to demand chain management. “For the past 20 years, retailers have focused on the 80 per cent of supply-side issues that have influenced their business,” he said. “The reason they haven’t focused on the other 20 per cent - on the customer demand side - is that they didn’t have the tools. Now they have to tools to measure how many people come in the front door, where they walk and what the most popular areas of their store are.

For more information about Beonic, visit www.beonic.com. For media assistance, call John Harris at Impress Media Australia on 08 8431 4000 or email jharris@impress.com.au.