A tour bus is depositing 50 or so passengers on the pavement next to the grands magasins — Paris’s fabled department stores, Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. As they stream into the stores, any brand would love to know who they are and what makes them notice one product over another.
A new batch of French entrepreneurs is hoping to make that dream a reality for luxury houses.
Tech start-ups and luxury retail consultants say top brands across the luxury sector are quietly pushing to bring the advantages of the web into their retail stores. Parisian grands magasins and flagship stores on the Champs-Élysées have been testing smartphone frequency detectors and connected merchandising displays to experiment with collecting data from shoppers as soon as they approach their retail store — much like online retailers have for years used “cookies” planted in web browsers.