Ridgelinez, a strategy consulting firm, sought a reliable retail-analytics partner to measure and analyze how customers navigate and interact with gaming machines inside an arcade game center on behalf of its client.
The Challenge
Using only existing point-of-sale coin-slot data, the client could tell how many times a machine was played, but lacked visibility into the metrics that actually explain performance — the average number of plays per customer, the average time spent on each machine, the average transaction value per visit, and how play and spend differed between male and female shoppers.
The Solution
Ridgelinez partnered with RetailNext to deploy full-path (shopper-journey) analytics from Insights across the gaming center. Using the RetailNext API's event-export tool, Ridgelinez extracted raw event data and integrated it with other datasets, including in-house POS. Path analytics tracked each customer's journey from entry to exit, and traversal-zone analysis — examined hour by hour — revealed which machines customers interacted with and in what order. The Aurora® sensor's top-down view added approximate gender demographics, letting Ridgelinez segment gaming behavior by male versus female shoppers.
The Results
Ridgelinez can now follow the full path of each customer journey and analyze which machines are visited, how long customers stay, how male and female shoppers differ in their play and spend, and whether a visit leads to single or repeat plays. Combined with POS data, those insights help the client optimize machine layout and floor plans, refine marketing strategies, design loyalty programs around real spending patterns, and improve customer service.
