InComm Payments’ Go Studio and Kennesaw State University announced a three-year research project on October 22, 2024 to study the in-store shopping experience. The planned opening phase would examine how customers interact with gift card aisles, using computer vision to study browsing behavior and reactions to product displays.
The work is funded by InComm and brings together Go Studio staff with university researchers and students led by Dr. Bobin Deng in Kennesaw State’s computer science department. The partners said the first year would focus on technology that analyzes images to identify information about shoppers’ interactions with the assortment.
A central aim is to inform planograms, the layouts retailers use to decide where products appear. Go Studio head Michael Parlotto said a large selection of gift card brands can still result in a lost sale when shoppers cannot find the product they came to buy.
Later context helps explain the commercial question without supplying an answer to the experiment. In October 2025, Go Studio director Billy Harbinson linked the KSU work to InComm’s separately published 2024 shopper survey: convenience influenced purchase intent for 62% of open-loop shoppers and 59% of closed-loop shoppers. His account still described the computer-vision solution as being designed; these survey responses are not results of that collaboration.
Convenience cited by gift-card shoppers in InComm’s 2024 survey
Share of each card-shopper group saying convenience influenced purchase intent; published April 29, 2025.
percent
Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
Source
Later contextual survey, not the KSU experiment or a measured display effect. More than 6,400 gift-card shoppers participated in quarterly 2024 surveys. Exact group bases, geographic coverage, weighting and full questionnaire are not disclosed; groups may overlap.
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| Category | percent |
|---|---|
| Open-loop shoppers | 62 percent |
| Closed-loop shoppers | 59 percent |
The research expands a relationship that began with student projects exploring artificial intelligence in 2020. By the announcement, Go Studio had sponsored nine Kennesaw State capstone projects, alongside other activities including hackathons and internships.
Kennesaw State said the partnership would give students experience applying AI to business problems. For InComm, the project connects research into retail displays with a commercial category where physical merchandising remains an important part of gift card discovery and purchase.
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Maya Bennett
Maya Bennett covers customer loyalty, employee rewards and incentive programmes for Gift Card News.