Cosibon: an E-commerce like platform enabling bricks-and-mortar stores to use sophisticated product recommender systems

Compared to online-retailers, bricks-and-mortar stores have only limited possibilities to understand consumer preferences, their intentions, and their feedback. The first are able to evaluate clickstream data collected on their webpages alongside the actual purchase data to put together a comprehensive view on individual customers. Bricks-and-mortar stores on the other hand have to rely solely on the evaluation of scanner data collected at the point of sale. Thus, akin to the Event Horizon in physics, describing the boundary beyond which events are unobservable, we introduce the term Receipt Horizon to describe the natural boundary beyond which a retailing company is unable to observe the behavior of individual customers. In this demo paper we present our comprehensive approach on how bricks-and-mortar stores can go beyond the Receipt Horizon. We demonstrate how existing customer loyalty programs can be leveraged by an extensive mobile app, transferring proven ecommerce concepts to physical retailers and collecting numerous novel information about consumers.