Nobody can question that location-based services are hot these days--especially in the retail space.
Retail in general is under increasing competition and pressure to maintain its revenues and profitability, especially physical retailers who are threatened by online businesses, ranging from one person outfits to global giants.
Physical retailers big and small are all facing the same phenomenon: smartphone users walking around their stores (inside and out). Google and Nielson recently reported that shopping queries are two times as likely to be in store. So people are actively on their smartphones in stores. The significance of this statistic to retail is that there is a huge opportunity here to optimize dollars, be it marketing funds or operational savings–all of which can be enabled by location-based services.
Cisco’s location based services using the Mobility Services Engine and the Connected Mobile Experiences solutions is market leading and generates a lot of interest among customers and I get the privilege of speaking with many retail business executives on a global basis.
In retail, the two big rocks are revenue and loyalty. The Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) solution helps line of business leaders reach those goals by aligning with the mobility trend. Armed with the location-based services of CMX, you can captivate your customers by creating personalized, context-based engagement to boost loyalty, while generating location analytics data on customer movement patterns and behavior for optimizing operational costs. Read More »
Location Services has been a holy grail in many industries for almost 5 years now and none more so that in the retail industry. In recent discussions with Chief Executive Officers in leading retailers especially those from a marketing or operations persecutive some interesting comments and trends are emerging.
Retail & Location Analytics
Firstly about a year ago retailers were looking at LBS and saying we must have this, were unsure how to use it to effectively drive their business.
Today in April & May 2013 these executives are equally as excited about the possibilities location services brings to their business, however they are also putting an even greater focus on the ROI. When vying for capex resources a compelling business case is one that has a clear return on the investments needed. When considering a guest WiFi deployment and associated location based services the business cases emerging are varied especially when speaking with some global retailers. Read More »
Do you want to increase sales by providing shoppers with the information they need when and where they need it – in your store?
Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences solution can help you do just that. Connected Mobile Experiences is a new solution that helps enables retail organizations to use Wi-Fi location services to deliver engaging store experiences and generate valuable shopper insights.
So you have a Cisco Wi-Fi network: what can you do to get more insight into the people using it? Do you know which part of your venue is more crowded? Ever wondered where people spend the most of the time in your venue? Where have people been before they arrived at your venue?
Whether it is in retail, leisure, travel or manufacturing, anytime there are people interacting with a Wi-Fi environment, there is also potential to improve the user experience--that is, if you can first visualize that interaction.
With the acquisition of ThinkSmart technologies, a leading data analytics company proficient in location data mining, Cisco opens up a new customer base – that of customer oriented marketing. Cisco ThinkSmart Location Analytics solution leverages your existing WLAN infrastructure and can help you gain insight on customer behavior, giving you an opportunity for better sales and operations.
The great (relatively) untapped kingdom of ‘indoor wireless’ may be the next great frontier?
With expectations of WiFi connectivity for just about any business we visit these days, there is no reason this next step for making the physical world more accessible should not be adopted. Indoor location services offer the chance for us to use our ever-present smart devices to navigate large facilities easier than ever before. This also represents great opportunity for retail to touch (and measure) customers better than ever before as the struggle between bricks and mortar vs. online shopping continues.
Fierce Broadband Wireless covered the recent Qualcomm and Cisco announcement around Hotspot 2.0 and Passpoint and you can see how this continues to heat up. It is valuable for so many reasons.
