Beacons, once a tech favorite, are now being overshadowed emerging technologies like magnetic positioning and even Wi-Fi. We’ve praised beacons in the past while acknowledging their limitations and even their possible competition. Wi-Fi, while by no means new technology, simply may have more capabilities than beacons or magnetic positioning.
According to Patrick Connolly, principal analyst at ABI Research:
It’s not so much bringing back a focus on Wi-Fi rather waking up to the need for Internet style analytics in-store; and the best way to achieve that today is with Wi-Fi, particularly if you can leverage existing access points.
The essential reason a retailer might want to re-consider Wi-Fi is for the ease with which they can collect data which can later be used for a variety of uses, including campaign tracking, store layout changes and loyalty tracking.
Benefits of utilizing Wi-Fi in-store:
- Ease of data collecting and tracking marketing campaigns
- Ability to re-arrange store layouts
- Collecting loyalty information
- Capacity to reallocate staff due to needs
Data is here to stay and should be embraced by not just retailers. But with data comes the issue of how much is too much and can we make it travel any faster?
In the last year alone, humans created an estimated 4.4 zettabytes of data. This will only increase over time and retailers need to be prepared to collect and analyze a large portion of their customer data.
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