Chain stores and department stores, with their many shops to oversee, have increasingly adopted network cameras in recent years.
The cameras can be used so that the owner of a chain of stores can monitor images from each shop and give instructions remotely but directly to the shop. This helps to make work performance more uniform and operations more efficient.
Users are coming up with new uses from network cameras, furthermore, finding benefits that go beyond video surveillance. This is because they are using the cameras as tools to make work improvements, increase efficiency and otherwise improve marketing.
In brief, one can use camera images and image processing to analyze customer movement (e.g. in what sequence do customers walk around the store, how much time do they spend in each section, what are the overall trends in these). The goal of these uses is to identify the customer's path through the store and optimize shop shelf and product layout to increase sales.
Image processing, however, requires images in digital data form, and because network cameras process images 100% digitally, they make these uses possible for the first time.