• MarTech Today
  • Sections
    • Advertising
    • Marketing
    • Content
    • Social
    • Commerce
    • Sales
    • Analytics
    • Management
    • All
    • Home
  • Follow Us
    • Follow
  • MarTech Today
  • Ads
  • Marketing
  • Content
  • Social
  • Sales
  • Analytics
  • Mgmt
  • More
  • Events
    • Follow
  • SUBSCRIBE

MarTech Today

MarTech Today
  • Advertising
  • Marketing
  • Content
  • Social
  • Commerce
  • Sales
  • Analytics
  • Management
  • All
  • Events
  • Newsletters
  • Home
Martech: Marketing

Subscribe to MarTech Today to receive news and insights of where marketing, technology, and management converge.

Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms. We respect your privacy.


‘Beacons are dead,’ says CEO of a retail analytics firm

The main reason, according to Euclid Analytics’ head Brent Franson: consumers aren’t yet using their smartphones the way beacons assume.

Barry Levine on November 29, 2016 at 1:29 pm
  • More
An assortment of beacons from (starting upper left) Gimbal, Kontakt.io, Estimote, Radius Networks, GPShopper, Aruba

An assortment of beacons from (starting upper left) Gimbal, Kontakt.io, Estimote, Radius Networks, GPShopper, Aruba

“Beacons are already dead.”

That’s what Euclid Analytics’ CEO Brent Franson thinks. His company provides engagement and analytics solutions to retailers and, he told me, his firm is happy to work with beacons.

If they did something customers really wanted.

Beacons offer hyper-granular marketing directed at customers standing in specific spots in stores, like in front of counter 2B. The idea has been that retailers could then direct product info or a discount coupon about the socks on counter 2B to that customer’s smartphone, standing right there.

But, Franson told me, the reality is different for retailer-focused beacons. (There are, of course, use cases for beacons outside of retailers.)

First, it’s a significant amount of effort for that scenario to take place. The beacons must be installed and maintained, and fleet maintenance is sometimes problematic, because the devices use short-range Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity. Some vendors integrate WiFi with their beacons, or have other workaround solutions, but those alternatives aren’t standard.

Then there’s the issue that, for standard beacons, the consumer needs to download a supported app. Some retailers share an app, but it’s still a download. Google offers Eddystone beacons, which broadcast a URL to a compatible browser and don’t need an app, but you need the right browser. And, at the moment, Eddystone is not widely deployed.

But the real reason Franson is bearish on beacons has to do with consumers’ current shopping habits.

‘Too advanced for consumers’

We’re barely at the point, he said, where a consumer looks at her smartphone when she enters the store itself, to see if that store offers any new product info or sales. It’s not yet a common use case, although it does happen.

He points to Foursquare as a location application where the unit is the store, or restaurant, or landmark, not this spot in front of this mannequin wearing this outfit. Foursquare, he noted, is using GPS, and functions as a kind of “better Yelp,” not as a micro-targeting platform to a finely-located point in a store.

Beacons offer greater granularity than GPS, but Franson pointed out that it’s not common customer behavior to check a smartphone at each new point in a store to see if there’s some new product info or discount coupon about this display.

In other words, beacons are a high-resolution solution to a problem that doesn’t yet exist, for a behavior that consumers don’t yet have.

“The use case is far too advanced for consumers” right how, Franson said.

This kind of shopping habit might evolve in a decade or so, he said, after consumers get accustomed to looking at their phones when entering a store, followed sometime later by looking at their phones at multiple points throughout the store.

But at that point, he predicted, the micro-granular targeting will be made available by some broadly-deployed technology, like geo-magnetic positioning, or higher resolution WiFi/GPS.

Franson noted that some of his retailer clients are using beacons to test out “stores of the future” concepts, but they’re “still in the experimental phase, and a lot of experiments are failing.”

“I’m rooting for beacons,” Franson said, “but I don’t think they’ll succeed.”



About The Author

Barry Levine
Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

Related Topics

Channel: Martech: Marketing

Subscribe to MarTech Today to receive news and insights of where marketing, technology, and management converge.

Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms. We respect your privacy.


We're listening.

Have something to say about this article? Share it with us on Facebook and Twitter.

ATTEND OUR CONFERENCES

April 15-17, 2020: San Jose

October 6-8, 2020: Boston

×

Attend MarTech - Click Here


Learn More About Our MarTech Events

White Papers

  • How Good Partnerships Should Reduce Your Workflow
  • The Telecom Marketer’s Guide To Mastering Display Advertising
  • How to Turn Leads into Repeat Customers
  • The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization
  • Adapting digital marketing for real-world results
See More Whitepapers

Webinars

  • CCPA Goes Live in Weeks: Is your marketing measurement ready?
  • 4 Ways to Get Started With Agile Marketing
  • Get More Value Out of Your First-Party Data: Using AI to Connect the Online-to-Offline Buying Experience
See More Webinars

Research Reports

  • Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
  • Identity Resolution Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Enterprise SEO Platforms
  • Call Analytics Platforms
See More Research
Sidebar Inbox Deliverability 2019
Sign up for the NEW MarTech Today.
Martech Today
Download the Martech Today app on iTunes
Download the Martech Today App on Google Play

Channels

  • Advertising
  • Marketing
  • Content
  • Social
  • Commerce
  • Sales
  • Analytics
  • Management
  • Home

Our Events

  • MarTech West
  • MarTech East

Resources

  • White Papers
  • Research
  • Webinars
  • MarTech Conference

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Advertise
  • Marketing Services
  • Staff
  • Connect With Us

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • iOS App
  • Google Play

© 2019 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.