Looking for your favourite read in a book store or a product in a supermarket has become easier and faster today after two retailers implemented beacons to better pinpoint in-store locations and send relevant information to customers' smartphones.
CU Book Centre and Tesco Lotus have recently applied Augmented Reality (AR) and iBeacon technology to serve their clients who shop for books in CU Book Stores and products at Tesco Lotus respectively.
iBeacon technology enables mobile apps to understand their position on a micro-local scale and deliver hyper-contextual content to users based on their location. The phone can alert apps when you approach a location with an iBeacon. In addition to monitoring location, an app can estimate your proximity to an iBeacon (for example, a display or checkout counter in a retail store). Instead of using latitude and longitude to define the location, iBeacon uses a Bluetooth low energy signal which the mobile devices detect.
For CU Book Centre, customers can search a book after downloading the CUBook Privilege mobile app. Just log into the AR mode, the camera will pop up, then move the camera phone through the shop after which each particular book category will be pinpointed on the screen, such as travel, education, religion and so forth. Customers can then walk to the section they are interested in.
In case customers want to search by book title instead of book type, they can just input the name of the book they want into the "search" feature and a message will pop up indicating where the book is located, including information such as the book's position on the shelf. As customers are approaching the target bookshelf, a message will tell them to look in the direction of where the bookshelf and book is placed.
"Most people today have smartphones and there are many advanced mobile apps. We also found that the lifestyle of present readers means that they are likely to prefer finding the books by themselves, we thus developed technology to facilitate this," said Kriengsak Hunsawek, deputy manager of the CU Book Centre.
Tesco iBeacon.
Compared with other book shops, the CU Book Centre is considered to be a large-scale book store, with every branch covering an area of more than 1,000m². Consequently, it can be difficult for customers to find the precise titles that they are interested in. Sometimes the CU Book Shops are short of staff, thus the application makes it easier for customers, ensuring they don't have to depend on employees all of the time.
Over 300,000 items are now listed on the CUBook Privilege application which is now available on iOS. For Android, an app is now being developed and is expected to be ready for download next month.
Currently, the app can be used at the CU Book Centre, Sala Prakiew branch. The service will expand to other branches in the near future.
Besides CU Book Centre, Tesco Lotus has also implemented iBeacon technology to offer better in-store customer experiences through the Tesco Lotus Shop Online application.
Wanna Swuddigul, Tesco Lotus digital and online business director, said that customers today are more informed and less inclined to wait for assistance. Instead they require instant information access and convenience.
"The numbers of this group of people are growing. The iBeacon technology gives shoppers the ability to receive customised messages about discounts and product information," Wanna explained.
Once you download the Tesco Lotus Mobile app, turn on Bluetooth to get the iBeacon, and when you walk past the area where there is a signal receiver, information will be sent to your mobile phone.
Similar to the way technology is implemented at the CU Book Store, categories of products available at Tesco Lotus will be communicated with customers via iBeacon. Besides special promotions and discount coupons that customers can redeem instantly, every product also provides lifestyle information associated with each product, for example, cooking tips, techniques for haircare, skincare and so forth. Right now the technology can only be used with three household brands, namely Knorr, Comfort and Dove. Tesco will expand the service to other product lines and other branches soon.
The iBeacon technology is now available at four branches of Tesco Lotus including Ramintra, Pattanakan, Seacon Square and Navamin. For customers who make an online order for Tesco Lotus products, iBeacon technology can also notify them when their order is ready for pick-up.
Wanna noted that in-store communication has been now growing because there are thousands of products which are competing in the space, so each brand needs to be able to communicate with customers as much as possible.
"We found that more than 76% of customers decide to buy the products in front of the shelves," added Wanna. "So we, as the space owner, can offer the best to customers so that they can go straight to the products."
