Mobile is not just another access point for your online business, it’s an in-store shopping aid. According to SapientNitro, 53 percent of consumers prefer shopping in-store vs other channels. 81 percent of these shoppers want to interact with their phones in-store, and 61 percent want to use “any device,” PC, smartphone or tablet, to help them shop. Beacons are one of the ways to play in the phygital age of retail.
What are some of the retail beacon trends to watch this year?
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE 3 BEACONS YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT FOR 2015
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Passive Beacons
MobileShopTalk’s “Beaconing by Request Enters the Market,” outlines 3 different types of beaconing: active (opt-in push messages), passive (interacting with a phone’s beacon without pushing content to the phone) and requested (customer requests beacon content). Most retail beacon implementations require the shopper to interact with an app, sending content and offers to a device when a shopper hits a certain location, or dwells near a certain product.
Passive beacons tap directly into phones, whether in hand, pocket or purse, and use location information and past behaviors to personalize content on nearby display screens. The shopper doesn’t need to engage their device at all — an innovation introduced by SapientNitro recently at the NRF Big Show.
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Requested Beacons
An example of requested beaconing is GameStop’s Shelfbucks pilot, which places beacons front-and-center with a prominent call-to-interact (as opposed to out-of-sight active and passive beacons).
The beacons serve as an access point to additional information, relevant to the product in question, with less friction than QR codes or looking up reviews on a mobile app. Requested beacons also have the ability to tap into user’s context to personalize content and recommendations, while collecting relevant data to add to the 360-degree view of the customer.
With 26 percent of consumers under the impression that retail staff is poorly informed, easy-access pull content is a great customer service value prop.
GetElastic contributor Kevin Lindsay recounts his holiday shopping experience with GameStop’s beacons, commenting that the technology was “Seamless, well-constructed, and designed to self-improve the more I engaged…[it] made me want to keep browsing, reading, and playing around with their app.”
Image credit: CC by Richard North
iWatch Beacons
iWatch won’t hit the shelves till Spring, but the supermarket chain Marsh isn’t wasting any time, setting up iWatch-ready beacons in all of its 75 locations. Marsh’s mobile app already boasts 33 million active users; iWatch users can receive offers and recipes, or tap into shopping lists created in the app with a hands-free experience.
Conde Nast and WebMD are rumored to also be rolling out iBeacon/iWatch projects. Will more brands and retailers follow? We’ll be “watching.”
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