Black Friday means a lot of human traffic due to the number of people taking advantage of certain deals in different stores. Stores are definitely interested to find out which stores have more human traffic and which attracts more customers.

This is the reason why stores are now exploring this new technology in which they use cellphone signals to track people's movements during this busy day. FootPath Technology offers this kind of service to some shopping malls in order to track down Black Friday activities in a more discreet manner. The company attaches discreet receivers to walls in the location that they will be tracking. These receivers would be able to track down people who have their cellphones switched on.

This technology would be able to locate which stores get more human traffic and which specific areas within the location attract more people. The reports derived from the use of this technology are similar to Google Analytics. The company presents graphs and charts which illustrates the number of shoppers during a certain period of time and the places where they visit frequently. The receivers also collect weather data and site event information in order to further assess the relationship between foot traffic and sales.

Though this would be a big help for commercial establishments, some people are expressing concerns about security issues that could be stepped on when using this kind of technology. In response with this, Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, VP of digital strategy for Forest City Commercial Management remarked that the store is not interested in "singular shoppers" and insisted that "The system monitors patterns of movement. We can see, like migrating birds, where people are going to." In line with this, some commercial establishment are opting to notify their customers about this method through hanging visible signs around the stores so that concerned customers could turn off their cellphones if they are concerned about security risks.

Companies have been tracking Black Friday activities even before but this is the first time that they would be trying out this kind of method. The use of this method in tracking customers have been used in other parts of the world specifically Europe and Australia.