How Beacons and Big Data Transform the Shopping Experience

Large and small businesses are rapidly recognizing the significance of big data and are dedicating substantial amounts of both time and financial resources to its acquisition. For retailers, the potential return on investment from comprehensive big data collection is tremendous. Retailers gather data from various sources including online sales, mobile applications, customer foot traffic, and enterprise systems for loyalty, CRM, and ERP.

In a perfect scenario, such an extensive data repository would empower retailers to significantly enhance customer experiences. However, this is not the current situation. As revealed by an IBM survey, 71% of chief marketing officers worldwide report that their organizations are ill-equipped to address the anticipated surge of big data in the coming years. What accounts for this high number of unprepared CMOs? The challenge lies in unifying disparate data sources that exist in silos, a complex technological issue.

In summary, these challenges include:

• Catching offline customer behavior is both difficult and costly
• Online behavior is straightforward to collect, yet hard to analyze
• Mobile behavior is challenging to capture and usually complex to interpret

This is where beacons come into play: mobile-enabled tracking technology that integrates location data and context, making all pieces seamlessly fit together.

RETAILERS: THE BEACON BASTIONS OF THE FUTURE

Beacons offer businesses limitless possibilities for collecting vast quantities of previously untapped data, including metrics like the frequency of beacon activations, customer dwell time in a specific location during particular times and dates, peak hours throughout the day or week, and the daily foot traffic around a location, among others. This information empowers retailers to make informed decisions regarding product improvements, staffing distributions across departments, and service enhancements.

Below are several key metrics achievable through the integration of beacons with your CRM system:

• Foot traffic, online visits, and app visits
• Recency and frequency of visits, customer behavior, and transaction patterns
• Effectiveness of merchandising and marketing endeavors
• Utilization of loyalty programs
• Service quality, queue management, and customer abandonment rates
• Capacity planning and resource optimization through mobile in-store analytics

HOW RETAILERS CAN STREAMLINE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES WITH BEACONS

1. Personalize offers and suggestions to loyal customers

A recent study indicates that for 61% of brands, repeat customers account for over half of their revenue. Nowadays, a consumer’s decision to purchase from or engage with a brand often hinges on that brand’s ability to reward them for their spending of time and money.

Deep data helps you develop personalized initiatives to boost profits and retention.

While beacons are commonly recognized for providing contextual content, they also facilitate a deeper comprehension of customer shopping behaviors by offering analytics pertaining to online, in-app, and in-store activities, brand preferences, favorite items, demographic information, location, and more. This deep data helps you develop personalized initiatives to boost profits and retention. With beacons, retailers can access insights regarding the number of loyalty points accrued on a shopper’s mobile app, enabling them to provide personalized offerings.

high-value rewards and alerts.

An excellent illustration of how beacons can enhance loyalty programs is the Bay Area’s renowned quick-service chain, San Francisco Soup Company, which specializes in soups, sandwiches, and salads.

Commonly referred to as SF Company, they utilize beacons to automatically detect loyalty program members who possess Bluetooth-enabled smartphones when approaching specific locations. Their tailored rewards program allows customers to locate nearby restaurant outlets, accumulate loyalty points, and redeem rewards via their smartphones. Additionally, beacons assist the soup chain in gathering customer data for targeted marketing of services to their audience.

For instance, if a loyalty program member occasionally visits for a cup of hot and sour chicken soup, beacons can send a personalized notification with a coupon offer for that specific soup to the customer’s mobile device as they pass by the outlet. The highly tailored nature of this rewards program enables SF Soup Company to boost foot traffic and increase sales at their locations.

2. Optimize store layouts and product placement

Retailers can utilize beacons to identify prime areas within their stores and subsequently refine layouts and product placements based on navigational trends. By monitoring customer dwell times in various sections and tracking their paths throughout the store, retailers can discern which areas attract the most traffic, thus enabling them to invest wisely and enhance return on investment. A/B testing can further clarify whether a specific product’s sales are driven by its inherent popularity or by its positioning in the store.

Moreover, this data can be integrated into your e-commerce platform to align your website and merchandising zones—both on desktop and mobile—with customer behaviors across different cities.

3. Help customers locate items in-store

Retailers can access shopping lists, wish lists, and favorites from their apps, assisting customers in finding items available in-store and directing them to the corresponding aisles for easy pickup.

Beacons can facilitate turn-by-turn directions, enabling customers to efficiently locate products within the store. Combining this technology with voice or text search functions can further aid shoppers engaging in quick grab-and-go trips.

Recently, Tesco implemented beacons to enhance in-store customer service. The grocery chain is testing beacons at its Chelmsford, MA location in conjunction with an app called MyStore. This app enables customers to create a shopping list at home and, upon arriving at the store, beacons notify them when their online orders are ready for collection. The goal is to use push messaging to enrich their customers’ shopping experiences.

 

4. Empower sales associates

Contemporary stores are striving to equip sales associates with comprehensive insights about every customer. This includes data on purchase history, location, shopping preferences, and social profiles, which provide relevant shopping details like birthdays and brand affinities. Supplying sales associates with this critical customer information will enhance their understanding of how to engage with each shopper.

While recognizing the significance of big data is essential, it is equally important to pinpoint, collect, correlate, and analyze the right data to drive business growth. By utilizing beacons, you can enhance customer experiences, streamline business processes, and increase revenue. Merging big data with beacon technology facilitates a data-driven business strategy that benefits both your brand and the customer.