Much of the conversation about location based services cover the landscape of GPS based solutions. GPS is great when you are in proximity to a location but misses the opportunity to pin point once you are in a physical location like the check out isle.
The flip side to the GPS location based platforms is the “In store” LBS, which uses things like wifi triangulation or other proprietary technology to pinpoint a customer. These solutions allow you to essentially tag locations in your store and when people walk by you can serve content based on their interest.
Shopkick is a good example of an in store app. If you have not seen ShopKick here is a great video from TechCrunch of a live demo walking around Best Buy.
Another interesting platform is a service called Zulutime which enables a store with small wifi nodes. These nodes can be placed thru out the store or on shopping carts and managed thru a cloud service. Once the nodes are in place a retailer can then overlay digital content thru out the shopping experience.
Enabling a location can create new opportunities for in store advertising and a value added to those companies who supply products to the store. Think of it as the digital end cap of this isle brought to you by Sony.. Where I see some real power with in store LBS is building custom apps that connect with a traditional rewards program and other historical customer databases.
Using a in store solution with a custom app might also allow brands to figure out a way to allow redemption from a phone. This is one of the issues that has yet to be resolved and will be a key tipping point for real time redemption.
