NEC is aiming to extend its presence in the retail sector through a new partnership with Macromill, a Tokyo-based market research firm.
Essentially, the companies are looking to combine their expertise in order to offer enhanced market research services. Macromill claims to have a network of 90 million individuals across 90 countries at its disposal for market research studies; NEC, meanwhile, offers sophisticated biometric and AI technologies allowing for the enhanced study of responses to marketing efforts.
For example, NEC’s Remote Gaze Detection Technology is able to detect the specific areas in a video or image that attract the audience’s eyes; applying this to Macromill’s panels, together with the latter’s methodology for gauging audience responses, could provide more detailed intelligence on marketing strategies to end clients. And for its part, Macromill already uses electroencephalographic technology to track things like brainwaves and heart rate among audience members, which would further enrich study data when combined with NEC’s technology.
In a statement announcing the collaboration, NEC SVP Osamu Fujikawa also emphasized the potential that lies in leveraging NEC’s facial recognition technology in these market research applications, asserting, “Our face recognition technology boasts the world’s highest precision scores”. Such technology could be used to detect certain emotions in subjects, or to make estimates about demographic information.
NEC and Macromill say they are aiming to officially launch their market research services sometime next year.
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