Best Buy Trialing Ultrasonic Waves To Finetune Customer Location
Written by Evan SchumanMarch 25th, 2010
Mobile geolocation is a tricky game, assuming you want to establish what product a customer is examining—or not examining—at a particular moment. It's good at identifying the building the customer is in, but not much more. Best Buy has started a trial "in a few stores" where it's using ultrasonic waves "as a fingerprint to say exactly where you are within the store," according to a Best Buy marketing exec.
Describing the smartphone as a "cord to my soul" and a consumer's "most personal device," Tracy Benson, senior director of Best Buy U.S. marketing, said the trial is promising some contextual relevance to know precisely where a customer is standing and what direction they're looking when they have their phone. Today's mobile technology "doesn't tell me where the customer is looking. This uses different sound waves to detect precisely where they are."
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One Comment | Read Best Buy Trialing Ultrasonic Waves To Finetune Customer Location
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Christine
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:59 pm
We are getting so close to being monitored from all directions in a brick-and-morter environment – I wonder where and when the privacy rules will start to evaporate. Ultrasonic direction, RFID tags in baskets and carts, Smart phone signals and real-time video. Maybe online shopping is better.