Beacon Technology – For Reshaping the Business

Technological innovations ease the life in various ways. Today, life seems to be impossible without mobile phones, internet, e-wallets and numerous apps. We often wonder about life even a decade ago.

Imagine yourself in a retail mart and it’s a huge one! You need to buy all the ingredients required for making your family’s favorite Macaroons. But you’re standing at the garment section and have absolutely no clue about where to go. You ask someone for help but rather get confused facing all the hullabaloo of the crowd. That’s one of the many situations where Beacon technology helps. Once you have this app and are familiar with it, you will be able to reach even to a piece of tofu of a particular brand. Not only this, you will also be receiving notifications about all the deals and discounts, the mart is offering.

So, What Exactly is Beacon? How Does It Work?

Beacon is a combination of technologies. It is a small device consisting of a CPU, batteries, a radio and is all about a Bluetooth radio transmitter. With a unique ID that gets broadcasted to your phone, and the app in your phone delivers the customized content. Suppose if there is a sale on grocery going on. So, even if the Beacon with same ID is transmitting the information, it will be tailored by this app according to the ongoing season or date. Beacons are differentiated by their unique IDs that the Bluetooth transmits.

Why the Beacon, When GPS is there?

Well, a Beacon may seem to be similar to GPS, but actually is very different. GPS or the Global Positional System is a much larger entity than a Beacon, which involves the network of a number of satellites orbiting around the Earth. The signals from these satellites are received by every entity, be it a phone, a car or even a drone. While the signals emitted by a Beacon are received only by the device that identifies its unique ID code.

Beacon in Retail Industry

No matter, how high the trend of online shopping may get, there are still many shoppers who yearn for offline shopping. And as a shopper, you would always want to stop by a place where you can shop easily without any fuss and can get a quick flow of discounts to avail, won’t you? With a Beacon app installed in your phone, you can have a great shopping experience. Even the retailers get a chance to showcase their offers easily for better customer engagement. Beacon solutions can definitely revive the culture of offline shopping that seems to be almost extinct in some sections of society. 

Know about another technological intervention in retail industry, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID).

A Beacon can perform many functions like tracking, navigation, security and even data analysis. So, apart from retail industry, Beacon solutions can be used also in Hospitality industry, Education industry, in offices, airports and various other places too.

The increasing advent of IoT, efforts of the government to improve the custom experience, and adoption of advanced technologies in various other industries, increased its market size by USD 2.10 Billion in 2019. It is expected that the market size will further touch USD 35.15 by 2027.

In a matter of time, you may find those tiny devices almost everywhere.