Marketing research system for obtaining retail data on a real time basis

Abstract From the Canadian patent

A market research retail sales data collection system and method includes a plurality of cooperating retail stores, each having an in-store device for automatically collecting, processing and storing market research data in a substantially totally passive or non-invasive manner with respect to the on-going operations of each retail store. Each in-store device detects, interprets, processes and store data on a real-time basis with respect to retail sales transactions occuring in the retail store. However each, such in-store device does not interfere with or require the active participation of the in-store Point-Of- Sale (POS) scanners/resisters, POS controller or store computer controlling …