With the wide array of clickstream data-analysis tools available today, online stores can tell who comes to their Web site, what products they look at, how long they stay, which promotions they respond to, what they buy, and how many leave without making a purchase. Brick-and-mortar retailers, however, are largely limited to analyzing transaction data, leaving them in the dark when it comes to understanding their customers' shopping experience.

Next week, at the National Retail Federation conference in New York, startup Brickstream Corp. will unveil video technology and business-intelligence software for tracking customer behavior in retail stores and banks. The system will help retailers determine what paths customers follow through a store, what parts of the store get the most traffic, what in-store displays and promotions shoppers look at and respond to, how quickly they're served by employees, and how many walk out or abandon a checkout line without making a purchase. Banks will be able to see how long their customers wait in line.

Video cameras installed by Brickstream or the store or bank discreetly record customers' movements as they shop or wait in line for a teller. The video is fed into computers where Brickstream software, using what the company describes as "patented image-understanding algorithms," creates time logs based on the video. Those time logs, in turn, are analyzed with the vendor's Brickstream Intelligence For Service and Brickstream Intelligence For Marketing applications. The tapes and collected information aren't linked to the identities of individual customers.

While simpler video systems are available for counting people as they enter a store, the Brickstream system is the most sophisticated use of video yet for gathering business intelligence, says AMR Research analyst Pete Abell. But he says Brickstream's analytical applications are still in their infancy. "They'll need more applications that will put hard dollars into the retailer's or (merchandise) supplier's pocket," he says. Brickstream is developing a third app for analyzing space utilization.

Brickstream is targeting retail stores, retail banks, and consumer packaged-goods makers who use the system in cooperation with retailers. The technology is available now and has already been installed by two banks, one store, and one consumer goods maker, although Brickstream wouldn't identify them. The technology's cost depends on the size of the implementation, including the number of stores and the number of cameras. A two-year contract for a system to monitor checkout lines, for example, would cost in the range of $25,000 to $50,000.