Beacon Technology for Retailers - Tracking Consumer Behavior Inside Brick-and-Mortar-Stores

For many years, brick-and-mortar retail has been confronted with an ever-growing e-commerce as a strong competing alternative, and challenging customer expectations. As a result, retailers need to increasingly focus on integrating emerging technologies to keep pace with online retailers and improve the customer’s shopping experience. In this context, beacon technology has been credited with the potential to fundamentally transform the retail industry. However, to date, widespread adoption by retailers has failed to materialize. One reason for the failed adoption could be false expectations regarding the applications of the beacon technology in the retailing context. To investigate this assumption in depth, we analyzed relevant literature to identify possible applications that beacon technology enables for brick-and-mortar retailers. We categorized the identified applications into three groups: (i) indoor navigation and localization, (ii) tracking and analyzing customer behavior and (iii) personalized and location-based advertising. Our work aims at revealing these challenges to make the true potential of beacon technology for brick-and-mortar stores transparent.