While the use of geo-data can discern the patterns of mobile users’ movements in aggregate, Turkish beacon platform Blesh has relied on the Bluetooth devices to connect the dots between the places where consumers are most likely to visit along their daily shopping excursions.
(by Daniel Parisi – originally appeared in GeoMarketing.com)The goal is to be able to tell advertisers how best to employ proximity marketing messages and anticipate consumers’ habits throughout an ordinary day. The study uses data from all 12,000 of Blesh’s beacons deployed in 51 cities throughout the country.
To get a better handle on how consumers are planning out their shopping and banking trips, trips, Blesh collected data from consumers who interacted with the company’s many beacons to find out in what order those consumers were visiting banks, restaurants, retailers, malls, and public transportation.
Blesh’s iBeacon Report shows that for the majority of consumers, 32 percent, the mall is the next stop after visiting a bank, followed by restaurants and big box retailers. For big box retailers, the next stop is usually the mall at 56 percent, followed by restaurants and then banks. Interestingly, for mall-goers the next stop most likely the movie theater at 30 percent, followed by restaurants and then public transportation.
Airports, an area Blesh is just starting to expand into, have the most predictable visiting pattern established in the study. almost 60 percent go straight to a restaurant as their next beacon-related visit. After that however, big box retailers are the next most likely destinations for recent travelers.
Blesh’s Beacon Ambitions
Fresh off of raising $2.5 million in Series A funding, Blesh have surpassed 12,000 beacons installed throughout the country, with 30,000 total being the company’s goal by the end of 2016. The funding will be put to use not just in expanding the reach of the company’s beacons, but towards deep research into the mobile and location-absed habits of consumers in Blesh’s home country.
As evidenced by Blesh’s ambitious projection for the amount of beacons deployed this year, the technology is quite popular in Turkey. “Two of the top retail companies we work with already have more than 100 beacons in many of their stores,” Blesh CEO Devrim Sonmez told GeoMarketing. “Shopping malls have been embracing the technology from the start and they are especially interested in seeing the analytics and the heat-maps. Our beacons are placed at more than 100 malls now.”
Retailers are taking an interest in beacons around the world, but Blesh CEO Devrim Sonmez notes a particular interest in location tech from the banking industry. The company has already worked with both Denizbank to promote their hands-free FastPay program which allows consumers to keep their credit card information on-file at a store or retailer and pay through their phones, and Garanti Bank to populate their locations with beacons and connect them with the bank’s iGaranti mobile app.
Daniel Parisi, Geomarketing.com