By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Forget GPS and beacon technology: magnetic mapping may be the future of retail. an analysis by Nielsen found that U.S. consumers spend nearly $500 billion a year on grocery, personal care, and other sundries, indicating that the “indoor market” has vast potential for indoor location and associated marketing. This has caused a virtual explosion in the emerging indoor location and proximity marketing arena, including cameras, WiFi, Bluetooth, Beacons, LED lighting, inaudible sound waves, and “pedestrian dead reckoning,” among others, according to an Opus Research Report.
Finland-based startup IndoorAtlas has released an app that allows stores to monitor shoppers via indoor magnetic fields. Founder Janne Haverinen explained that its method is able to pinpoint people more accurately than many current methods; IndoorAtlas is accurate to within 10 centimeters and two meters, depending on the building, compared to Wi-Fi or radio signals detected by a smartphone that are precise to within several meters. That’s the difference between, say, knowing a shopper is in the freezer section versus knowing he is standing in front of the ice cream. It also does not require a building to have any special equipment.
This data allows stores to monitor shoppers who have the software on their smartphones and tailor coupons and ads accordingly, pushing out an ad for a sale on a particular product as the customer walks past it, for example. The technology can also be used by consumers to find specific brands.
The new technology uses the built-in compass sensors in a user’s phone to track signals produced by the steel girders in a given building. Thus, unlike beacon technology, it requires no installation. The benefit for retailers is that it requires no hardware maintenance, and shoppers are provided with accurate information concerning product and brand locations.
Patrick Connolly, an analyst for ABI Research, told Bloomberg Business that “Everybody is chasing this indoor space. You’re talking billions and billions of dollars.”
A building’s magnetic signature is determined by “how much steel and metal is in the building” as well as how it’s constructed, Aaron Liao, IndoorAtlas’ director of developer evangelism, told Entrepreneur during a demo of the company’s mobile app. Every building will be different based on how it was built and where it’s located.
“You can say to it ‘Find me men’s shorts’ and I can give you turn-by-turn walking directions to every instance of men’s shirts, whether they are inside Bloomingdales, Abercrombie and Fitch, or Nordstrom,” says Liao. “It’s amazingly accurate. We boast one meter of accuracy, which is effectively the difference between leading you to men’s button-down shirts and the casual t-shirts that are right next to them. Three feet of accuracy means I can lead you directly to the soap versus the shampoo that’s right next to it.”
Currently, data must be added manually, but the company is working on ways to crowdsource the data in a manner similar to Waze, an app that allows users to share real-time traffic and road information.
The new app is being tested overseas and at the Westfield Mall in San Francisco.
And the app doesn’t just locate products; it can help find people, too. So if two shoppers get separated, they can opt to share their location with each other to receive turn-by-turn directions to be reunited.
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