1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the customer experience. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and apparatus that uses location awareness to provide an enhanced in-store retail experience for customers.
2. Description of the Background Art
In information technology, big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis, and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions.
While on-line commerce is now well established, and big data is beginning to become an important factor in personalizing user experiences across a range of on-line activities, the brick and mortar world remains unaware of all user information except for, perhaps during the execution of sales transactions, when stored user profiles linked to the user's identity may be used for authentication and, perhaps, to offer point of sales incentives.
A promising new technology that is finding increasing use in the brick and mortar world is near field communication (NFC), which is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters. Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications, such as Wi-Fi. Communication is also possible between an NFC device and an unpowered NFC chip, called a tag.
Thus, a user can enter a brick and mortar store and make a purchase without presenting a credit card, for example using NFC features of a cell phone. Because the transaction is entirely electronic, much can be learned about the user at the time of the transaction from what is already known about the user. Even so, given the insights about the user that could be offered, for example, by mining user information using the big data tools mentioned above, such transactions typically concern no more than authenticating the user and completing a sale.
Embodiments of the invention provide a nexus between a user's presence within, in proximity to, or movement toward a brick and mortar store outside of an explicit user transaction within the store, that is based solely upon the user's presence within the store, and not on any affirmative actions taken by the user. A presently preferred embodiment, with user permission as required, maintains location awareness of the user, for example via geo-location of a device within the user's possession, such as a smart phone, and communicates this awareness to the herein disclosed system in real time, as the user moves from location to location, which in turn communicates this information to brick and mortar stores and other such physical establishments at or near to the user's location. In this way, embodiments of the invention link the user's virtual presence, for example via the Internet, and all of the user-related information that is available for data mining, for example using big data techniques, to the user's physical presence at a physical location to create an enhanced user experience within the physical location in real time.
Embodiments of the invention provide a nexus between a user's presence within, in proximity to, or movement toward a brick and mortar store outside of an explicit user transaction within the store, that is based solely upon the user's presence within the store, and not on any affirmative actions taken by the user. A presently preferred embodiment, with user permission as required, maintains location awareness of the user, for example via geo-location of a device within the user's possession, such as a smart phone, and communicates this awareness to the herein disclosed system in real time, as the user moves from location to location, which in turn communicates this information to brick and mortar stores and other such physical establishments at or near to the user's location. In this way, embodiments of the invention link the user's virtual presence, for example via the Internet, and all of the user-related information that is available for data mining, for example using big data techniques, to the user's physical presence at a physical location to create an enhanced user experience within the physical location in real time.
The user has a wireless device, such as a smartphone, but which could be any wireless device that can be passively interrogated or that passively identifies the user's location, such as a GPS, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, 4G, LTE, NFC device, RFID device, Bluetooth device, etc.
An on-line profile 11 is associated with the user, which contains information about the user's Web browsing habits, demographic information, Web journeys at one or more websites, and the like. A user profile is a set of personal data associated with a specific user. A profile refers therefore to the explicit digital representation of a person's identity. A user profile can also be considered as the computer representation of a user model. A profile can be used to store the description of the characteristics of a person. This information can be exploited by systems taking into account the persons' characteristics and preferences. Profiling is the process that refers to construction of a profile via the extraction from a set of data. User profiles can be found on operating systems, computer programs, recommender systems, or dynamic websites (such as online social networking sites or bulletin boards). An example a user profile is shown in
Through a big data platform, data pertaining to an individual's interactions across channels, e.g. websites, call centers, in-store, can be stitched together to provide a holistic view of that individual's preferences and behavior patterns. Certain data elements can be used to link interaction data across channels, for example the individual's telephone number, email address, etc.
Although the user is not actively using the wireless device as part of the shopping experience, the device is active and, as such, the location of the device is known through use of geolocation techniques. Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as mobile phone, or an Internet-connected computer terminal. Geolocation may refer to the practice of assessing the location, or to the actual assessed location. Geolocation is closely related to the use of positioning systems, but can be distinguished from it by a greater emphasis on determining a meaningful location, e.g. a street address, rather than just a set of geographic coordinates. In addition to the physical location, other attributes, such as direction of motion, velocity, acceleration, etc. are also considered part of the geolocation and can be used to customize an in-store retail experience. In
For either geolocating or positioning, the locating engine often uses radio frequency (RF) location methods, for example Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) for precision. TDOA systems often use mapping displays or other geographic information system. This is in contrast to earlier radiolocation technologies, for example Direction Finding where a line of bearing to a transmitter is achieved as part of the process. Internet and computer geolocation can be performed by associating a geographic location with the Internet Protocol (IP) address, MAC address, RFID, hardware embedded article/production number, embedded software number, such as UUID, Exif/IPTC/XMP or modern steganography, invoice, Wi-Fi positioning system, or device GPS coordinates, or other, perhaps self-disclosed information.
Geolocation usually works by automatically looking up an IP address on a WHOIS service and retrieving the registrant's physical address. IP address location data can include information such as country, region, city, postal/zip code, latitude, longitude and time zone. Deeper data sets can determine other parameters, such as domain name, connection speed, ISP, language, proxies, company name, US DMA/MSA, NAICS codes, and home/business. With mobile devices, the geolocation can be determined from the GPS coordinates, WiFi coordinates, and/or cell tower triangulation of the device itself. This geolocation information, along with the device ID, such as a UUID, is available to applications running on the mobile device. These applications can transmit the geolocation and device ID over the data network to a big data platform. Backend servers can then compare the geolocation information from the mobile device against retail store location coordinates to determine proximity to the store and whether the device is moving toward or away from the store location.
In embodiments of the invention, the user's geolocation is used to determine the user's proximity to one or more stores or other physical establishments 18. An embodiment of the invention receives user presence information as an input 14. This information is combined at a processor 15, such as a computer or other data processing element, with the user's geolocation, profile, and other information within or available to, e.g. via the Internet, a database 16, to identify stores and other establishments that are near to the user's location or at which the user is located.
A nexus between the user location, the user's online or other activities, and stores at or near the user's location is found (106). Based upon this nexus, sales or other opportunities for the user are identified (108) and offered to the user (110). Offers can be presented to the user via a number of mechanisms including, but not limited to, mobile device application alerts, SMS, email, and a phone call using an outbound dialer.
An aspect of the invention is similar to, but significantly distinct from the use of geotargeting in geomarketing and Internet marketing, which is a method of determining the geolocation of a website visitor and delivering different content to that visitor based on the visitor's location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, IP address, ISP or other criteria. A common usage of geotargeting is found in online advertising, as well as Internet television with sites, such as iPlayer and Hulu which may restrict content to those geolocated in specific countries.
In contrast thereto, an embodiment of the invention tries to find a connection between the user's present location and the user's online activities, especially in connection with online commerce, as well as interactions across other channels including IVRs, call centers, and online chat platforms, and then identifies stores or other establishments at or near to the user's location that have a linking connection with the user. For example, if the user was recently shopping for tires online, but did not make a purchase, then the user may be presented with an opportunity, for example by a text message, to purchase tires when the user is visiting a store that has a tire department, such as Wal-Mart or Costco, or a sales person in the store may be alerted of the customer's presence and approach the customer with a special sales offer.
A key aspect of the invention is the fact that the user was not specifically looking for tires at this store, for example the user may have been buying groceries, but the user location information and online activities provided a basis for identifying the opportunity to offer tires to the user. This action is entirely passive and takes place in real time while the user is moving from location to location. Thus, unlike geotargeting, which takes place while the user is actively browsing the Internet from a fixed location, the invention makes use of the coincidence between the user's presence at a location and a connection between the location and the user's past online behavior.
It is important to note that, in many cases, the invention may require user permission due to concerns regarding user privacy. Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, providing to third-parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Privacy can entail either Personally Identifying Information (PII) or non-PII information, such as a site visitor's behavior on a website. PII refers to any information that can be used to identify an individual. For example, age and physical address alone could identify who an individual is without explicitly disclosing their name, as these two factors are unique enough to typically identify a specific person. Thus, because at least some user information is required, it is thought that the protection of user privacy may require user assent before some embodiments of the invention may implemented in connection with any specific user.
Use cases of the herein disclosed invention include, but are not limited to:
The computer system 1600 includes a processor 1602, a main memory 1604 and a static memory 1606, which communicate with each other via a bus 1608. The computer system 1600 may further include a display unit 1610, for example, a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a cathode ray tube (CRT). The computer system 1600 also includes an alphanumeric input device 1612, for example, a keyboard; a cursor control device 1614, for example, a mouse; a disk drive unit 1616, a signal generation device 1618, for example, a speaker, and a network interface device 1628.
The disk drive unit 1616 includes a machine-readable medium 1624 on which is stored a set of executable instructions, i.e., software, 1626 embodying any one, or all, of the methodologies described herein below. The software 1626 is also shown to reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory 1604 and/or within the processor 1602. The software 1626 may further be transmitted or received over a network 1630 by means of a network interface device 1628.
In contrast to the system 1600 discussed above, a different embodiment uses logic circuitry instead of computer-executed instructions to implement processing entities. Depending upon the particular requirements of the application in the areas of speed, expense, tooling costs, and the like, this logic may be implemented by constructing an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) having thousands of tiny integrated transistors. Such an ASIC may be implemented with CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor), TTL (transistor-transistor logic), VLSI (very large systems integration), or another suitable construction. Other alternatives include a digital signal processing chip (DSP), discrete circuitry (such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, inductors, and transistors), field programmable gate array (FPGA), programmable logic array (PLA), programmable logic device (PLD), and the like.
It is to be understood that embodiments may be used as or to support software programs or software modules executed upon some form of processing core (such as the CPU of a computer) or otherwise implemented or realized upon or within a machine or computer readable medium. A machine-readable medium includes any mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine, e.g., a computer. For example, a machine readable medium includes read-only memory (ROM); random access memory (RAM); magnetic disk storage media; optical storage media; flash memory devices; electrical, optical, acoustical or other form of propagated signals, for example, carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.; or any other type of media suitable for storing or transmitting information.
Although the invention is described herein with reference to the preferred embodiment, one skilled in the art will readily appreciate that other applications may be substituted for those set forth herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Accordingly, the invention should only be limited by the Claims included below.
This application claims priority to U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/644,341, filed May 8, 2012, which application is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference thereto.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61644341 | May 2012 | US |