Skip to main content

Indoor location in the retail industry

Here's an excerpt from a great article in Retail Customer Experience, looking at Meridian's indoor location solution and what it means for the retail industry in particular:

According to mobile strategist and analyst Bruce Krulwich of Grizzly Analytics, the tracking feature of Meridian's system is the key benefit to retailers.  "What they [Meridian] give more than any others is that all of the information about where people are moving is stored in the cloud," Krulwich said. "For retailers to know the dwell time as people walk around the store, this is data that retailers find attractive. It helps retailers know how many people are standing around thinking about what to buy." ...
The article also discussed the balance between mass-market systems like Google Indoor Maps and dedicated systems built on technology from start-up companies in the space:
 "I think that within 2-to-3 years we will see indoor mapping and location services as big as outdoor is now," he said. "All major mobile companies are working on this. But they are looking at mass market, not the retail side of it. They are not quite as accurate as ones tied into the retail experience. Even if Google comes up with [a map and position inside a store], there is still room for more retail-oriented companies to bring more accuracy."

See the full article (here) for more on the impact of indoor location on retail.

To learn more about indoor location technologies and services, click here for  Grizzly Analytics' comprehensive coverage of indoor location technologies, including research by all the major mobile companies, along with almost 40 start-ups in the area.


Popular posts from this blog

33 Indoor Location Related Start-up Acquisitions

  Acquisitions Continue in the Indoor Location Industry; Grizzly Analytics Shows Price Growth at the High End and Continuity at the Low End New York, NY, February 22, 2021 - Despite the recent pandemic, M&A deals in the indoor location area have maintained a steady pace of 4-5 deals a year. At the high end of the spectrum, prices have increased to up to $400 Million for the highest priced recent deal and $165 Million for the second highest. At the lower end, many earlier stage companies have been acquired in the $2-3 Million range. A newly updated report from Grizzly Analytics gives prices and strategic details for 33 acquisitions in the indoor location area.  While the highest priced indoor location acquisitions have historically involved chip-based technologies, recent acquisitions have been more varied. “A few years ago the focus of indoor location M&A was all around pure localization technologies. The biggest deal to date is in fact for a chip-based localization ...
Read more

Adding real value to smartphone camera pictures

Most technology features follow a similar path, from imitation to improvement to transformation.  First they imitate something that came before, like telephones imitating the telegraphs of yesteryear.  Then they improve on them, like phones entering individual homes. Then they transform the entire endeavor, completely surpassing the previous technology, like phones automatically connecting people without operator involvement, which enabled society to communicate in ways that telegraph users never contemplated. Cellphone cameras are following a similar path.  At the beginning cellphone cameras were imitating digital cameras, adding the convenience of carrying only one device but basically doing the same as digital cameras did.  Then they improved on them, both with quality improvements and with the ability to share pictures wirelessly without wiring the phone to a computer.  The ability to instantly share and synchronize pictures from a phone is somewhat transf...
Read more

See great indoor location tech from the 2017 testbed

The videos from the Indoor Location Testbed at GeoIoT World 2017 are now released! Here is your chance to see how these solutions performed in our real-world evaluation, in the videos below. The testbed evaluated each solution by walking around a real-world venue, the GeoIoT World 2017 conference, measuring performance at 10 pre-selected points. Click here for the testbed report, which analyzes each solution's performance in a wide variety of metrics, including real-time accuracy, accuracy stabilization, consistency, latency, floor change, first fix, setup time & more. Let's start with BlooLoc's tag-based solution, which achieved accuracy under 2m in real-time and under 1.5m after stabilization: Then let's look at the infrastructure-free solution from GipsTech , which achieved accuracy under 2m without using any beacons or radio signals: Next is GipsTech's solution with BLE added: Next is BlooLoc's phone-based solution: Fin...
Read more