Mobile device based inventory management and sales trends analysis in a retail environment

1. A non transitory program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executed by the computer to perform the method steps for managing inventory and sales trends in a retail environment using crowdsourcing by using mobile devices, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving, by a retail store server, product availability data acquired by one or more mobile applications executing on mobile computing devices regarding a number of missing product items on a shelf in the retail store, wherein availability data is in the form of an image acquired of the product on the shelf;

processing the image of the product to identify products on the shelf using tags attached to the shelves and distances between the tags, including identifying products missing from the shelves and the number of each available product on the shelf, wherein the tags are visible in the image of the product, and wherein the tags are not sensors and each tag has a distinctive pattern; and

calculating turnover, sales velocity and sales trends of the identified product.

2. The computer readable program storage device of claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises triggering a warning message if the retail store shelf is empty.

3. The computer readable program storage device of claim 1 , wherein identifying products on the shelf using tags comprises the steps of:

identifying the tags on the shelves using tag template intbrmation and information regarding a distribution of tags on the retail store shelves that is read from a tag database;

mapping the identified tags to a shelf and its corresponding assortment of items;

identifying products in the picture by reading product templates related to the identified tags from the product database; and

transmitting a list of identified products and their quantities to the portable device.

4. The computer readable program storage device of claim 1 , wherein calculating sales velocity and sales trends of the product comprises the steps of:

receiving for each product p a timestamp t and a number of items n of product p on the retail store shelf, where the product information is organized as pairs p(t, n);

ordering product pairs p(t, n) according to the timestamp t to generate an ordered sequence;

calculating a least square line fit for the sequence to estimate a sales' velocity; and

comparing changes in a slope of the line fits to determine a change in the sale's velocity over time.

5. The computer readable program storage device of claim 1 , further comprising:

transmitting the sales velocity and sales trend of the product to one or more third parties' systems in a supply chain of said retail store;

receiving, by the retail store server, a request for an optimized replenishment route for an employee of the retail store to replenish the identified products in the shelves;

generating an optimized replenishment route from the products' turnover calculation that minimizes out-of-the-shelf occurrences; and

transmitting the optimized replenishment route to the mobile application for display to a user,

wherein products and their locations on retail store shelves have been cataloged in a product database.

6. A system to calculate sales trend of a product at a store shelf based on crowdsourcing, comprising:

at least one portable application configured to be executed on a plurality of portable computing devices;

a plurality of tags attached to each store shelf rack, wherein the tags are not sensors, a location of each tag is knwon and each tag has a distinctive pattern; and

a retail store server connected to the portable application on each of the plurality of portable computing devices over a wireless local network,

wherein availability data of a product is measured on each store shelf rack by processing images of the product acquired by the at least one portable application using the tags attached to each store shelf rack, wherein the availability data includes missing product data and the number of each available product on the shelf wherein the tags are visible in the product images, and the retail store server is configured to determine sales trends of the product from the availability data received from the at least one portable application over the wireless local area network.