Aruba Networks has announced a new Wi-Fi solution for in-store mobile marketing, developed in partnership with Digby and Nearbuy Systems, that it says enables retailers to provide highly personalized and differentiated customer interactions. The rapid spread of smart phone applications, combined with increasingly powerful and intelligent access networks, enables retailers to connect customers with promotions to increase revenue and enhance customers' in-store experience.

Nielsen Research projects that fifty percent of the U.S. population will own a smart phone by the end of 2011, with two-thirds of them researching products and prices online while in stores. Innovative retailers are racing to create compelling in-store shopping experiences to establish and maintain customer loyalty. 3G networks and legacy 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi networks, designed and deployed for simple inventory management applications, lack the performance and intelligence needed to enable these personalized customer experiences. The combination of 802.11n (300Mbps) Wi-Fi performance with advanced wireless network security and management enables retailers to connect with their customers in new and compelling ways. 

In a December 2010 survey of retail IT departments conducted by Aruba, 78 percent of respondents said they had in-store Wi-Fi, but 53 percent noted that its primary use is currently "inventory control." "Wireless point-of-sale enablement" and "associate productivity (voice)" were listed as the second and third most common current uses for in-store Wi-Fi. This will likely shift toward more customer-experience focused applications, as demonstrated by the 38 percent who list "customer Wi-Fi access" and the 29 percent who name "self-shopping" as targets for deployment in the next two years. Thirty-six percent of survey respondents represented organizations with more than 1,000 stores, while 19 percent have 50 or fewer stores.            

The Aruba Wi-Fi solution for in-store mobile marketing consists of:

• Secure and scalable in-store Wi-Fi: Aruba’s 802.11n Wi-Fi solutions include an ICSA-certified stateful firewall to protect retail networks from public access, and adaptive coverage management to ensure uninterrupted operation even when hundreds of customers connect at the same time in the same store. Per-user firewall policy enforcement allows quality of service (QoS), bandwidth limits, and time-of-day and location restrictions based on the relationship between the customer and the retailer.
• In-store customer Wi-Fi engagement: Aruba's Amigopod software enables retailers to securely register customers and reliably deliver personalized access and targeted messages including special merchandise offers and advertisements to them.
• Wi-Fi optimized smart phone applications: Collaboration between Aruba and its partner and mobile commerce leader Digby enables retailers to offer a rich and personalized shopping experience to its customers with smart phone applications. Performance and location intelligence available through Aruba’s Wi-Fi improve application responsiveness and increase the relevance of offers made to customers inside the store.
• Presence and location intelligence: Aruba’s 802.11n Wi-Fi provides real-time presence information to enable store-level message targeting. Aruba's partnership with Nearbuy Systems allows retailers to get granular, product and area level message targeting as well as in-store navigation capabilities.

"Retailers' success depends on their ability to provide the best possible in-store shopping experience to their best customers, who are increasingly using smartphones in-store for product and price comparison," said Andrew Borg, senior research analyst for Wireless & Mobility at the Aberdeen Group. "With their partners Digby and Nearbuy, Aruba is the first WLAN vendor to put together a compelling Wi-Fi solution that enables retailers to deliver a highly personalized and differentiated mobile shopping experience."