An Information Visualization Approach to Retail Space Management (VisMT)

Retail space management is one of the more crucial challenges faced by retailers today with an ever ever- expanding volume of data to which they must refer when making decisions. Problems have emerged that are intractable using traditional means but for which interactive information visualization shows much promise. These problems or tasks are exploratory in nature and use temporal multivariate data. Department stores must maximize and optimize return on allocated retail space. Although product sales are readily available, the missing link for most retailers is a precise understanding of each store's layout in relation to its capacity and performance. This paper introduces a novel approach Visual Space Management (VSM) demonstrated with a multiple-linked view application (VisMT) that explores retail data related to space performance. VisMT integrates familiar information visualization representations and a 3D interactive layout of store floor plans with retail data sources. Parallel coordinates plot serves as a multivariate visual control panel in the coordinated system. Seasonally retail data analysis is performed simultaneously in linked views through time. Visual inquiry methods are supported for conditioned temporal multivariate data.