Over the weekend Apple splashed out a $20m acquisition of the start-up company WiFiSLAM, in a great effort to increase its location and mapping capabilities after Google Maps put Apple Maps to shame earlier on this year. The Android mobile phone application includes indoor navigation for some shopping centres and airports.
With WiFiSLAM, retailers can help customers to successfully navigate their way through their stores, finding the items they want to buy quickly and easily. Research has shown that ‘indoor retail location’ market could be worth $5bn in the US over the next 5 years.
Purple Wi-Fi have already taken advantage of this growing market, the vast increase of smartphone users and the value that data collection about these users can bring to businesses. Our analytics reports provide demographic and real-time activity information about shoppers to retailers – their age, gender, location, contact details, when they logged on, how long they’re online, how often they visit and importantly, how they move around and shop within the store.
We can also provide the facility to send SMS push notifications based on a customer’s location within the store, moving away from the tradition means of marketing to using real-time data about customer activity.