With all the attention paid to ROI (Return on Investment), most retailers are, to date, missing out on the upside of an IOR (Internet of Retailers). That is the main take-away from Place Conference-New York, which Opus Research convened on June 9, 2015. The point was dramatized in a keynote case study by Jeff Donaldson, senior vice president of GameStop Technology Institute (GTI).

GameStop is a $9 billion, diversified company with leadership positions in videogame retailing, digital/mobile gaming and mobile/wireless retailing among other lines of business. GTI launched a pilot project in selected stores in Austin, where company headquarters is located and, for several months, put technology to use designed to “equalize the channels” by supporting a “digital outside the home” strategy.

Through judicious use of indoor location technology, interaction analytics and highly-conspicuous beacons GameStop has effectively created digitized stores within each store. The combination of technologies detects a customer’s presence in specific shopping zones, assesses their status with regard to the PowerUp Rewards Program (which has over 40 million members) and serves relevant information directly to a customer’s mobile device, as well as to iPads in the hands of a sales associate.

Based on the successful pilot, it is expanding to San Francisco, New York and Nashville.

“Webrooming” versus “Showrooming”

Today, most retailers are very concerned about “showrooming,” referring to the common practice whereby customers use brick-and-mortar stores as places to see and touch items before ordering them at a lower-price online. Yet Donaldson noted that “webrooming,” whereby customers search, shop, sample and select items on the Web before heading to a local store for purchase or pick up, is much more prevalent than is widely believed. By adding more precise recognition of a customer’s presence in the store, it has achieved measurable improvements in customer loyalty, sales and revenues.

A wide range of technologies are taking shape that remove technological barriers to individuals taking total control of all phases of their search and shopping experience. Ever since search engines (okay, Google!) emerged as the go-to provider of navigation through time, space, cyberspace and information stores, the divide between online and offline experience has been eradicated. If you live in a city and are riding a bus or subway, look up from your smartphone or tablet and take stock of how many others are heads-down, eyes-on-the-glass commuters. No more evidence needed.

But what has this meant for retailers and their suppliers. The growth of the Web brought us eBay initially to promote peer-to-peer markets but organically growing into a network that simplifies the processes involved with bringing buyers together with seller. PayPal quickly followed to facilitate payments among and between those individuals. Likewise, Amazon.com entered the world innocently as a purveyor of books but always had it mind to add records, digital content of all kinds to the point where it is defining the future of delivery logistics and predictive retailing.

Understandably, brick-and-mortar retailers have perceived Web-based retailing as dire threats and they had formulated strategies to fight back. At Place Conference speakers successfully made the counter argument. Retailers are advised to embrace, employ and augment Web-based and mobile technologies in order to create productive commercial conversations with their best customers. In this context, “location is the cookie” for supporting seamless transition from online-to-offline customer interactions.

Categories: Mobile + Location, Articles

Tags: indoor location, beacons, Place Conference, retail analytics, Mobile Experience