# Revolutionizing Retail Analytics: Advancing Inventory and Customer Insight with AI

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00023 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00023/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 9 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [ByteTrack: Multi-Object Tracking by Associating Every Detection Box](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06864/) (2021)
- [BoT-SORT: Robust Associations Multi-Pedestrian Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14651/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Engineering an Efficient Object Tracker for Non-Linear Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00738/) (2024)
- [Learning Association via Track-Detection Matching for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22105/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In response to the significant challenges facing the retail sector, including inefficient queue management, poor demand forecasting, and ineffective marketing, this paper introduces an innovative approach utilizing cutting-edge machine learning technologies. We aim to create an advanced smart retail analytics system (SRAS), leveraging these technologies to enhance retail efficiency and customer engagement. To enhance customer tracking capabilities, a new hybrid architecture is proposed integrating several predictive models. In the first stage of the proposed hybrid architecture for customer tracking, we fine-tuned the YOLOV8 algorithm using a diverse set of parameters, achieving exceptional results across various performance metrics. This fine-tuning process utilized actual surveillance footage from retail environments, ensuring its practical applicability. In the second stage, we explored integrating two sophisticated object-tracking models, BOT-SORT and ByteTrack, with the labels detected by YOLOV8. This integration is crucial for tracing customer paths within stores, which facilitates the creation of accurate visitor counts and heat maps. These insights are invaluable for understanding consumer behavior and improving store operations. To optimize inventory management, we delved into various predictive models, optimizing and contrasting their performance against complex retail data patterns. The GRU model, with its ability to interpret time-series data with long-range temporal dependencies, consistently surpassed other models like Linear Regression, showing 2.873% and 29.31% improvements in R2-score and mAPE, respectively.