Article
Can IPS enhance the shopping experience?
Retail Customer Experience sat down with Christian Lundquist, CEO of SenionLab, to explain IPS and how it might help retailers.
May 21, 2015 by Josh Fischer — Editor, NetWorld
Creating an integrated shopping experience between online channels and brick-and-mortar stores is among the hottest trends in retail today. A recent TimeTrade study revealed that 85 percent of consumers preferred to shop at physical stores, versus shopping online. Retailers are looking at ways to have ecommerce enhance their traditional shopping experience.
Enter indoor positioning systems for retail, a technology meant to bridge the gap between the computer and the store. We sat down with Christian Lundquist, CEO of SenionLab, to explain IPS and how it might help retailers.
RCE: What is indoor positioning systems?
Lundquist: Indoor positioning systems position an individual or an item indoors. While GPS commonly is used for positioning outdoors, it is satellite-based which makes it ineffectual indoors since satellite signals cannot enter through the roof of a building. Therefore, deriving positions of people and things indoors requires a different technology: IPS.
RCE: What is behind the technology in IPS?
Lundquist:While there are several options for IPS, SenionLab focuses on technologies that use the hardware already available in a standard smartphone. Since most people already carry smartphones, the hardware needed for IPS is already there and is managed and supported by the end-user. The accessibility is huge, since everyone with a smartphone can take advantage of location-based services, such as interactive maps. Our technology utilizes the internal motion sensors in the smartphone to compute the end-user’s motion, which creates an agile and near-instantaneous responding position indicator. Unlike other systems on the market, our solution also uses radio-signals from WiFi and/or Bluetooth Low Energy beacons (aka iBeacons) mounted on walls or ceilings, which then derive a robust and absolute position within the building. We call our method of combining both beacon technology and motion sensors “Sensor Fusion.”
RCE: How is IPS accessed on a smartphone?
Lundquist: IPS can be accessed by any app containing our software. The position can be used internally in the app to create location-based messages, for instance, or for navigation indication on a map.
RCE: How does IPS promise a revamp of the shopping experience?
Lundquist:A hot retail buzzword is O2O (online-to-offline). Essentially, it means creating an integrated shopping experience between online shopping and traditional, brick-and-mortar stores, and looks at how the benefits of online shopping can enhance the traditional shopping experience. Location-based services with an accurate IPS are essential for combining the end-user’s position in the store with his/her smartphone and the corresponding information in the online store. Moreover, it is an essential tool for retailers to analyze the motion patterns and in-store behaviors of shoppers (in the same way as they do on the online store today).
RCE: How does grocery apps built on IPS possibly help shoppers match items on their grocery list with locations of those items in the store?
Lundquist:Shoppers will store their shopping list in an app that is connected to the store’s product database. The app will sort the list by location and direct the shopper through the store.
RCE: How do apps built on IPS offer up discount coupons or provide capabilities for pre-ordering deli items?
Lundquist:The IPS knows where the shopper is situated within the store, making it easy for the app to offer up a coupon for Cheerios that can be used at checkout, for instance, when the shopper is in the cereal aisle. For areas that require additional wait times, like the deli, the customer could pre-order in advance. The IPS will alert the deli that the shopper has entered the store so workers can then prepare the fresh order, while allowing the customer to avoid the deli line.
RCE: How would the grocery store have to participate with this technology?
Lundquist:The store’s role is minimal, beyond providing a reliable database of products for the app. Where the value comes in is when the store applies analytics tools to understand customer data provided by the IPS – how much time customers spend in certain areas of the store, for instance, or aisles that are unpopular -- and then using those observations to improve their service and revenue.
RCE: What is the value it provides for grocery stores, malls and big box stores?
Lundquist: IPS offers a valuable, additional channel to connect with the consumer. It brings the good service of an online store into the traditional store without removing the personal contact with the retailer and his/her staff. IPS also can help staff be used more efficiently to advise those who have not found help in the app. Observations from the analytics tool can be used to improve service, operation and thereby increase sales.
About Josh Fischer
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Retail Customer Experience.
