Retail Traffic Counting: Maximizing In-Store Potential By Michael Bunyar, St. Michael Strategies

Retail chains operate in a fiercely competitive market. Today, many store owners view a 0% sales increase as a victory — they didn't lose market share. Given this situation, it seems completely unrealistic to talk about a 5%, 10% or even 20% increase in sales. Yet, that's what some chains are achieving. How? They count their traffic.

There are two ways to grow sales: (1) increase your traffic or (2) improve your performance on traffic. If you don't know your traffic, you can only guess at the reasons for sales performance — good or bad. Traffic counting tells you whether fluctuations in sales are due to traffic, performance on traffic or a combination of both. Better yet, it lets you act on it.

It's more about knowledge than technology
There has been a significant change in the trafficcounting industry in the last five years. The focus used to be on technology — with executives wondering if they should choose beam counters or cameras as their traffic-counting solution.

Michael Bunyar is president of St. Michael Strategies, Inc. founded in 1998. He is a founding partner of Bunyar Malenfant International, and has been selling traffic counters and staff productivity systems to retailers around the world for over 30 years. With a number of former senior retail executives who have successfully implemented traffic counting programs in different ways and in different parts of the world, Mr. Bunyar felt that retailers could achieve significantly better sales and profits through a more focused use of traffic and related information.