Shane Cole
One of America's oldest retailers is among the first to deploy Apple's iBeacons as Macy's has begun a pilot program with the state-of-the-art Bluetooth-based microlocation system.
The 155-year-old department store chain has partnered with Redwood City, Calif.-based Shopkick to install iBeacons transmitters — Â called shopBeacons — Â throughout the chain's flagship Midtown Manhattan and San Francisco locations, reports GigaOm. Shopkick's technology will allow Macy's to track shoppers' movements throughout the stores, serving up different offers based on the floor or department the customer is in.
In addition to one-off location-based alerts, Shopkick and Macy's are using the shopBeacons technology to tie customers' at-home shopping with their in-store visits. "If [a customer] "likes" a specific product in the app, shopBeacon can remind her when she enters the store that sells it," according to Shopkick.
Shopkick says the shopBeacon hardware, which is encased in a palm-sized enclosure with a rounded dome, can run for up to five years on a single battery. Once the Macy's trial is complete, Shopkick will begin rolling the product out to their other retail partners, with each shopBeacon sporting a price tag of around $40.
Other major non-retail organizations have also embraced iBeacons. In September, Major League Baseball announced plans to use iBeacons to enhance fans' experience in the ballpark, demonstrating their long-term goal with a pilot installation at the New York Mets' Citi Field.
Apple quietly introduced iBeacons alongside iOS 7 at July's Worldwide Developers Conference, and the Bluetooth Low Energy-based technology was quickly recognized for its potential to revolutionize location services with its low power requirements and ability to precisely pinpoint users' locations inside buildings. Many believe it could form the basis of a new iTunes-powered mobile payments system, similar to what Google has attempted to create with the NFC-based Google Wallet.
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73 Comments
1) Spooky, being tracked in a store 2) Can't wait for Dick to show us his implementation 3) I like Burberry, where they show additional colours of a dress in the mirror when the woman tries it out in the fitting room
This would be great at Home Depot. I can never find the AC filters
Absolutely! Or how about at the grocery store. It scans your shopping list and plans out your route and alerts you when you have reached the item. It keeps a running total $ as you go.
I would hope that it is an opt in type of service. Or I guess I mean you can shut it down when you don't want to be targeted or tracked while shopping. I am cool with it as long as I have full control of MANY privacy settings.
Does Apple make these? If so, where do they sell them?
Walking around a store looking at my phone strikes me as a bad experience. Either use an app like Amazon to buy stuff online or walk into a store and open your eyes.
Ooh, grocery stores will never do this. They’re designed to get you as lost as possible so you’ll buy more. They put the highest traffic items in the back so you’re forced to walk past everything else and go, “Say, mesquite flavor potato chips… What is mesquite? Maybe it’s made from mosquitoes…” No clocks, no windows, no easily accessible exits, and they rotate shelf content roughly once a month to keep people searching.
It works on idiots, at least.
I would hope that it is an opt in type of service. Or I guess I mean you can shut it down when you don't want to be targeted or tracked while shopping. I am cool with it as long as I have full control of MANY privacy settings.
Bingo.
So why not have audio alerts from your pocket? Either a preset tone or have Siri speak it to you. “Hey, you just passed the milk. Get 1% this time, fatty.”