With smartphones everywhere, traditional search companies like Google and Microsoft have been helping direct customers into stores using their mapping based services. When your store is indoors, i.e inside a shopping mall, traditional mobile location services don’t work.
The Moscow Mall, a large shopping centre based in Moscow, Russia has installed beacons which enable customers to locate stores when inside the mall as well as promoting offers to customers as they walk by. Israeli -based WiseSec who developed the technology in use within the mall have one of the few indoor location-based technologies not based on GPS.
WiseSec offers a sort of indoor GPS solution — a proprietary solution actually based on the Bluetooth beacons protocol. WiseSec installs its communications beacons throughout a building or mall, and when customers sign in with an app (such as a coupon app offered by the mall), they sign in to a location network for the building, allowing for transmission of coupons, offers or messages to customers. Features of indoor mall location software can include:
- Automated check-in – sending a promotional message to potential customers near the store, combined with a store staff alert.
- Check-in can also include an automatic WiFi offload from the cellular network to the retailer WiFi node.
- Precise shelf level in-context offers – coupons, special offers and product information at desired in-store locations
- In-store navigation – directing shoppers to their desired product locations
- “Self Help” in predefined product locations – allowing users to alert store staff from their existing location, whenever assistance is needed.
- Virtual » Physical cart – transforming virtually purchased goods into a physical purchase, alerting relevant store staff whenever a physical product is required
- “NFC without NFC” – enabling an NFC-like payment experience, without the need for
- NFC enabled smart devices or an NFC terminal at the point-of-sale
- Automated check-out – Goodbye message, uploading device Wifi and Bluetooth back to their original state.
- In-store shopper route analysis – a complete log of the consumer’s in-store shopping route
