Dirk Callaerts, CEO Brick-and-mortar retail stores have to compete with online stores. Though physical stores offer a tactile experience for customers when selecting a product, along with in-person assistance as and when required, they just cannot match the convenience and cost-effectiveness that online retailers offer. Consequently, physical stores need novel tactics to prevent gradually being pushed into obsolescence. This is where BlooLoc makes a difference. The company provides technology for accurate indoor positioning of smartphones, tablets, and active tags along with asset tracking (shopping carts and baskets) to drive innovative services in retail giving physical stores a higher competitive strength in their battle to survive the growing success of online stores.
“We believe that retail stores can achieve success by enhancing customer experience, increasing the conversion rate, and engaging the customer more with personalized approaches,” remarks Dirk Callaerts, CEO, BlooLoc. For the purpose, the company provides yooBee technology, based on sensor fusion of Bluetooth signals, inertial sensor data, and floor plan information. yooBee enhances the customer experience by monitoring and predicting cashier activity to help customers avoid the frustration of standing in long queues at the cashier. Through the call-for-assistance feature, yooBee provides customers with personal contact and advice from a store employee which is the key differentiator between a physical store and an online shop. Customers conveniently receive the assistance of store personnel, anywhere in the store while continuing their shopping journey, without the waiting otherwise required at a help desk. yooBee’s product search and navigation features assist the customer in finding the required products, especially in overwhelmingly complex stores.
Furthermore, to increase the conversion rate, yooBee enables the store owner to optimize the layout of his store by precisely tracking shopping carts and baskets in the store and performing analytics in real time (heatmaps, hotspots, dwell times, journey analysis, cross-category sales, and more).
Knowing the location or journey of your customers through your physical store or shopping mall, brings you insights and know-how on the performance of your store that goes beyond just analyzing POS data
Consequently, the popularity and placement of product categories can be evaluated and decided, respectively, to increase the customers' store stay-time and basket value. “Knowing the location or journey of your customers through your physical store or shopping mall, brings you insights and know-how on the performance of your store that goes beyond just analyzing POS data,” says Callaerts.
Contributing to higher customer engagement, the Promowink app signals customers when they are near a promotion for products they favor, while shopping. BlooLoc also engages customers with new loyalty systems based on stay-time, a number of store visits or store zones visited.
BlooLoc's motto "Best-in-class indoor positioning and asset tracking" justifies yooBee’s highly accurate localization capabilities, easy installation, and maintenance of hardware. The cost-effective, scalable, and robust solution can be grown from a single store to a chain worldwide. Also, respecting privacy, BlooLoc avoids camera-based systems and ensures complete anonymity of data about the customer's movement and dwell-time in the store.
A cosmetics drugstore chain has installed the BlooLoc solution in 42 stores in Slovakia to gather customer data for analysis. Going beyond just analyzing POS data, BlooLoc provided insights about the location, popularity, and success of various products, enabling the client to improve their store layout increasing sales tremendously. “For instance, keeping the more popular product at the back of the store, increases customer store stay-time and basket value,” explains Callaerts.
BlooLoc is currently utilized in over 880,000 square feet of installations including retail stores. Plans are underway for geographical expansion to the USA and the Middle-East. BlooLoc is also developing other innovative services such as for delivering food or drinks right where the customer is using their smartphone, in an Über-like way, now indoors. Proud of its engineering DNA, BlooLoc continues to innovate and perform R&D for higher accuracy, robustness, and reliability.
