Discount pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse is “considering” installing around 1000 sensors in each of its retail stores to better understand what consumers want to buy.

AMS solutions architect Antoine Sammut - who has spent five years at the retailer - told VMware’s vForum event in Sydney that the retailer saw “tremendous” opportunities from the internet of things.

“We can actually get to the point where we can almost feel what is happening in a store,” Sammut said.

“It’s a strange concept but when we [as consumers] go shopping we will dwell in particular areas, we will pick up products and look at them.

“As a retailer, we need to be able to understand is this product interesting and how we can actually improve the experience.

“In order to be able to deliver that, we are considering having thousands upon thousands of sensors out there, within each store having over 1000 sensors.”

Sammut said that some of the processing of sensor data is envisioned to occur at the edge, before the remaining data is drawn back to a central point for further analysis, such as through the use of machine learning algorithms.