Cameras tracking shoppers: the economics of retail video surveillance

Douglas Cumming*, Sofia Johan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

We examine whether video surveillance data enables improved retail performance. We analyze sales data collected from six sporting goods stores. We relate the sales data to an experiment where three stores had placebo video surveillance, and the other three stores made use of information learned in the video surveillance starting half-way through the sample period. A difference-in-differences analysis of the data indicates the use of video surveillance enables a substantial increase in total sales per hour, the number of transactions per hour, and the average size of each transaction.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)235-257
Number of pages23
JournalEurasian Business Review
Volume5
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2015

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We owe thanks to the Editor, Professor Chi Keung Marco Lau, two anonymous referees, Mehmet Belgin, Ender Demir, and the seminar participants at the 16th EBES Conference, Istanbul, 2015, for helpful comments and suggestions. We owe thanks to I3 International for providing data, and to Vy Hoang, Jack Hoang, Andy Hoang, Nada Miskovic, Grace Baba, and Felix Martinez for their helpful guidance in preparing this paper. We owe thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Eurasia Business and Economics Society.

Keywords

  • Information asymmetry
  • Retail entrepreneurs
  • Search costs
  • Video surveillance

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Business,Management and Accounting
  • Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)

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