Gadgetory

making stores smart Bluetooth beacon technologies been getting a lot of buzz lately but the area that is at the center of the heat map is their usage in retail stores the idea is fairly simple a small device that runs on batteries would be installed on a wall a countertop or a ceiling of a retail store and it could be many of them installed there they would in turn send out very short data strings to all the Bluetooth receivers around them typically your smartphone and all of this happens on a new technology called Bluetooth Low Energy or Bluetooth smart it's different than the Bluetooth you use right now primarily because it uses very little energy and it doesn't require all that tedious pairing and connection now the short little message is that the Bluetooth beacon sends out that your phone picks up instruct your phone to go to the web and pull down content that's related to where you are or what you're doing it can be very focused on the immediate area where you're standing or it could be widened out to relate to the entire store there is store proximity beacons could reach out to your phone on the sidewalk let's say to urge you to come into a store based on its products special offers or your past patronage then there's the check-in stage a beacon just inside the door could trigger a reward for you coming into the store tailored based on your customer history and it could also tee up a pre-approved digital payment method for whatever you may buy then there's product information as you stroll the store the products in it would describe themselves on your phone screen simply by you approaching them that information can be powerfully personalized because remember the contents being served up by robust existing web servers not that limited little beacon and finally checkout no more having to look for a cashier or even an employee with a phone or tablet to check you out you just leave the building remember you already set up your payment back on beacon stage number two so you're already approved Nielsen research suggests the smartphone has set the table for the beacon seventy percent of smartphone shoppers use a store locator sixty-three percent use their phone to check prices and product data in the store 37 percent keep their shopping list on their smartphone 34 percent pull up mobile coupons at checkout and twenty three percent have used mobile payment on their phone in some form or another now of course before this gets any real traction we've got to get through a few hurdles apps what apt you need installed for the beacon to work on your phone worst case would be an app for every store better case would be for every chain of stores ideal would be that the technology is built in at the operating system level and you need not install anything but we're not there yet ham sets your phone needs to have Bluetooth Low Energy Hardware built in now iPhones have had it for a while with iOS 7 and future iOS 8 support Android Windows Phone and Blackberry have been supporting it at the operating system for a while but it's going to be a while before it's ubiquitous on Android handsets not until 2018 when we get to maybe 90% and finally there's trust there's a lot going on here that might spook consumers this idea of automatically being logged in when you enter a store having your personal preferences linked to your visit automatic payment already being authorized that could spook as many consumers as it delights if it's not handled well this is a good place for merchants to be just as sensitive and respectful as they are innovative but I know this every shopper I've encountered would have a much better time in the store if they could identify what they want find it within the stores geography and pay and get out of there without any delay or friction so beacons have a definite possibility for next big things down