Beacon Use In Stores Boosts Engagement, Purchase Intent

Two beacon-related surveys show that awareness of beacons and interaction with beacon-triggered content in stores is growing. One survey comes from Swirl, which deploys beacons in retail stores and has a nascent beacon “ad exchange.” The second is from mobile marketing platform Placecast, which included beacons as part of a larger holiday shopping survey.

According to the Placecast survey (fielded by Harris), “over half of all phone owners surveyed said they were familiar with in-store beacons, and 15 percent said they had engaged with them.”

Swirl offers more extensive data about consumers attitudes and interactions with beacons. Swirl currently has beacons placed with retailers Lord & Taylor, Hudson’s Bay, Urban Outfitters, Alex & Ani, Kenneth Cole and Timberland.

The company “analyzed in-store campaign performance data from tens of thousands of shopper interactions and surveyed shoppers who received beacon-triggered messages over the past 3 months.” It found the following:

• 60 percent of shoppers open and engage with beacon-triggered content
• 30 percent of shoppers redeem beacon-triggered offers at the point of purchase
• 73 percent of shoppers surveyed said that beacon-triggered content and offers increased their likelihood to purchase during their store visit
• 61 percent said they would do more holiday shopping at stores that delivered mobile content and offers while they shop

This data is self-serving of course. However in-store offers are well received by consumers and consistent with how they use smartphones in stores today — to search for deals and coupons.

Beacons have become the indoor location technology of choice for retailers, though the Bluetooth devices are just one of several that can be used. They have a number of limitations that some vendors are working to overcome. Aruba Networks, for example, recently introduced beacon “trilateration,” enabling indoor turn-by-turn navigation, which had not previously been possible.

Indoor marketing and analytics are broadly gaining momentum. Whether using beacons or other technologies, we should see near 100 percent adoption among the top 100 retailers by the end of 2015.