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Technologies

Beacons

Assess

Bluetooth Beacons are small devices that can be placed in physical locations such as supermarkets and hotels. They can be used for indoor location tracking and proximity marketing. They work in conjunction with mobile apps, where the app can detect when it is near a beacon and trigger an alert to the user.

There is a good opportunity for businesses to use beacons to improve the customer experience in a place of business. For example, if you run a car dealership, you could use beacons to direct customers to the right parking bay to drop their car off.

Or, if you operate a train company, you could use beacons to record which driver is in the cabin.

Beacons cost anywhere from £10 to £300, depending on battery life, range and software. Estimote are a well known manufacturer or beacons for mobile apps.

They are not perfect. For example, temperature and humidity may affect how accurately a phone can detect the range of a nearby beacon. They also require battery changes.

We think that Bluetooth beacons show a lot of promise, and hope to see them grow in popularity over the coming years. We'd recommend you include them when exploring new ways to meet customer needs.

Our opinion

Assess  Explore and experiment in order to see if it would work for your business.