As consumers increasingly expect personalized, seamless shopping journeys, Bluetooth beacon technology is equipping retailers to make that vision a reality. Compact wireless transmitters powered by batteries for years, beacons have become the connective fabric enabling brick-and-mortar stores to fuse the advantages of online and offline commerce.
By tapping location signals from shoppers’ smartphones, beacons pave the path for responsive, automated and intelligent in-store retail capabilities not possible before.
Personalized Promotions
Beacons placed around displays for specific products can detect shopper proximity and push product information, recommendations, discounts and coupons to the individual’s smartphone in real-time. This creates a customized shopping experience.
Immersive Digital Discovery
Beyond advertising, beacons also augment in-store product discovery. As shoppers examine products, relevant multimedia content like video demos can automatically display on their phones to provide an immersive, interactive learning experience.
Inventory Lookup Assistance
Connecting an item’s beacon signals to backend inventory systems enables shoppers to check its availability across store branches in real-time. Sales assistants can also verify inventory counts on the retail floor itself when helping customers.
Smart Fitting Rooms
In apparel stores, linking fitting room beacons to item RFID tags enables those spaces to recognize what products customers brought in. Smart mirror screens automatically display recommendations for items that pair well.
Checkout-Free Shopping
With beacons across stores and in shopping carts, systems can automatically tally the items picked up through a shopper’s journey and directly charge their linked payment method upon exit. This eliminates checkout lines completely.
From personalized engagement to frictionless transactions, Bluetooth beacons supply brick-and-mortar stores with the context, convenience and cool factor to draw customers in. The location intelligence beacons provide is opening new competitive possibilities for retailers to offer distinctive omnichannel shopping experiences.
