Today inMarket is beginning a huge rollout of iBeacons to grocery stores including Safeway and Giant Eagle locations in Seattle, San Francisco and Cleveland. The rollout will place the Bluetooth LE beacons at the entry of over 200 stores in the coming weeks and more after that.
Those iBeacons will be used in a variety of ways by inMarket’s apps initially as a part of its Mobile To Mortar program, and then partners down the road. The primary goal is to reach shoppers who they know with absolute surety are walking in or right near a store in order to maximize the effectiveness of messaging.
The beacons are small round devices slightly larger than a quarter that contain a Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy radio and a small circuit board supporting it. The devices send out short-range signals that can communicate with smartphones like Apple’s iPhone and some newer Android devices. Those signals are picked up and interpreted by apps like inMarket’s current App Store offerings and are used to trigger a variety of different behaviors.
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