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not only depend on their size but also on their location. Since certain locations
are already known to attract larger portions of the crowd (“hotspots”), these will
be more expensive for companies wanting to place a booth there. In the end,
however, fair organizers need detailed movement data in order to give more
accurate estimates of these rental prices and possibly adapt the distribution of
exhibition stands based on findings extracted from these data.
In light of this application context, a cooperationwas set upwith a well-known
fair organizer owning a large exposition venue composed of eight halls and
covering an area of over 50,000 m 2 . During two editions of a large professional
catering fair (2009 and 2010), the Bluetooth tracking methodology was tested
in this indoor environment. Some basic results are shown in this section.
Tests showed that 35% of the visitor population was tracked, which is signifi-
cantly higher than the detection ratio of around 11%during the Ghent Festivities.
The most important factor contributing to this higher figure is most likely the
increased penetration of Bluetooth-enabled devices in the population of catering
professionals. Figure 14.6 a shows the distribution of the number of halls visited
per detected individual for the fairs in 2009 and 2010. The curve for the 2009
fair clearly shows a smaller share of individuals visiting four halls or less, and
a higher share visiting five halls or more. In short, visitors tended to visit more
halls on average in 2009 than in 2010. The histograms in Figure 14.6 b show the
distribution of time durations spent across the different halls. Durations of less
than 5 minutes were filtered out for visualization purposes (these represent peo-
ple traversing a hall instead of “visiting” it anyway). There is a clear difference
in average times spent in each hall. Visitors seem to spend most time in hall 1
(which is the main and also largest hall), followed by hall 8 (which is the second
largest hall). The difference between the remainder of the halls (which are all
equal in size and smaller than halls 8 and 1) is smaller. Visitors spend roughly
equal amounts of time in halls 7, 4, and 3, followed by halls 2 and 5. Hall 6 is
on average visited for the shortest amount of time.
Customer Movements in a Shopping Mall
The value of modern tracking technologies in generating valuable marketing
intelligence has already been touched upon. In order to examine the specific
merit that Bluetooth tracking could hold in this context, the technology was
also tested in a retail environment sensu strictu : a shopping mall that consists
of thirty-nine stores of varying size distributed over three floors. The movement
of customers from one store to another was registered during a one-month
period leading up to Christmas. Scanners were also placed at the entrances
and the subterranean parking lot in order to analyze visitor flows in and out of
the venue. Table 14.1 shows the number of visitors that were detected in each of
the stores inside the shopping hall, sorted from the most popular clothes store to
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