Giken Trustem and unerry combine foot-traffic and behavioural data for Japan's malls
A Kyoto sensor maker and a Tokyo location-data firm have combined their tools into a single service, PASSER-MARKETING, aimed squarely at the back-office decisions — leasing, tenant support, renovation timing — that shape which floors and tenants a Japanese shopping centre keeps.
Giken Trustem, the Kyoto-based maker of the PASSER people-counting system, and unerry, the Tokyo location-data firm behind the Beacon Bank platform, began offering a joint service called PASSER-MARKETING on 15 September, the companies said. It combines Giken Trustem's counting hardware, installed in more than ten million units across Japan according to the company, with unerry's GPS and beacon-based behavioural data drawn from roughly 150 smartphone apps.
The service is built around three functions for commercial-facility operators: profiling where visitors come from and how often they return, mapping movement inside a building, and benchmarking a facility against nearby competitors. Giken Trustem and unerry said the tool is meant to support leasing decisions, tenant assistance, merchandising and renovation planning — analysis that has typically required stitching together separate hardware and data-vendor contracts. The companies plan to demonstrate PASSER-MARKETING at the SPECTACLEs 2026 conference at Tokyo International Forum on 17 September.
Pairing a hardware vendor's raw counts with a behavioural-data platform's context is a logical response to what mall operators keep asking for: not just how many people came through the door, but who they are and where else they shop. The number worth watching isn't the launch date — it's whether facility operators start citing PASSER-derived visitor profiles, rather than gut instinct, when they negotiate rent or pick a tenant mix.