If you follow mobile tech or digital retail news, you will have heard about a mysterious new technology called iBeacons that seems to be being billed as changing everything in retail.

If you follow mobile tech or digital retail news, you will have heard about a mysterious new technology called iBeacons that seems to be being billed as changing everything in retail. With so much discussion around iBeacons it’s hard to figure out, firstly, what they actually mean for retailers, and secondly, if they are expected to have a big impact in the market.

The science bit

The most important thing to point out is that there are a lot of competing providers all vying to be your beacons of choice - iBeacons is just one (Apple’s) solution. Other companies like Estimote, Stick N’ Find, and Qualcomm’s Gimble are essentially all competing to do the same job as Apple’s iBeacons. In this post I will talk about bluetooth beacons in general and what they mean for retailers.

The best way to think about beacons is as a digital game of Hot & Cold. Beacons are physically placed around an environment where they broadcast a Bluetooth Low Energy signal to your phone saying ‘warm. warmer. HOT!’ as you move closer to the beacon. This may not sound revolutionary, but as soon as your phone knows if it’s warm / warmer / hot in relation to a beacon, your phone suddenly understands where it is in the real world. This is a huge deal. When your phone can understand where it is in the real world, it becomes more intelligent - it can adapt better to its surroundings, serving more meaningful experiences for us.

Let’s get physical

For years physical and digital retail experiences have been two parallel universes, both existing in their own way, both just ticking along with no communication between each other. You could be in a Tesco looking at electronics, decide you want some more info from their website, go online and instead of seeing information about Tesco electronics, you see bacon. We all love bacon, but not when we’re searching for a TV (ok, maybe still a little).

There have been efforts to better align digital experiences to a physical experience, with QR codes giving product info, AR bringing physical products to life, and even very valiant efforts from retailers such as Walmart with their apps’ ‘in-store mode’. All these things ensure that your digital experience matches the one you’re having physically. Beacons do this cheaper, more effectively, and to a far greater degree of accuracy than any other mass-market solution.  

Beacons broadcasting from an M&S iPad can help shoppers in need of assistance find an in-store assistant to help them face-to-face. A loyal customer can have all their personal preferences loaded onto their app as soon as they walk into a Tesco, before being guided around the store to pick up all of the products they want. Electronics retailers hit hard by showrooming can provide unique, in-store only offers to keen customers when they know they are standing directly in front of a product. The possibilities are endless - once you understand where your customer is, you can trigger any digital experience you like.

Retail 2014

So should you burn all of your marketing and product roadmaps immediately and order hundreds of beacons? Yes. No, not really. There are many providers, all offering the same thing, just in their own way. This tells us that the core principle of micro-location in a physical space is something that is very serious, and is coming sooner rather than later. However, which solution ‘wins out’ or how you can use beacons to enhance your retail experience is something that will inevitably take months and months to perfect. Indoor micro-location is a huge deal and should be tested and experimented with before your competitors do, but can start very small with a basic trial, understand how your customers interact with your experience and start to build out your unique beacon proposition this way. Exciting times ahead.

Joel Blackmore is senior innovations manager at mobile agency Somo