Information about the company
- Company: Kesko.
- Region: Finland.
- Field of activity: Retail.
- A number of sales objects: 98 supermarkets.
- Implemented solutions: Indoor navigation using ‘smart’ shopping carts.
Defining the problem
According to the statistics, buyers go to food stores, on average, 6 times a month and spend 41 minutes there. Sometimes bad supermarket navigation and difficulty in searching for the necessary goods are the main reasons why there are crowds in shops, which leads to irritation among visitors.
There is another problem – the personalization of advertising. Especially on the eve of holidays and days off, there is a necessity to inform clients of the forthcoming discounts and promotions or attract their attention to some special offers. The existing advertising possibilities don’t make use of this potential.
Problems that had to be solved:
- Inconvenient navigation in supermarkets.
- Big crowds of people.
- Low average check.
- Absence of personalization of advertising for shop visitors.
- A quick search of the required goods.
The goal of the project
To solve the emerging problems of the client using indoor navigation tools.
For achieving this goal, Navigine, in cooperation with the Finnish company-integrator, had to perform the following tasks:
- Develop an intellectual solution for shopping carts tracking.
- Develop a complex navigation system for supermarkets that would connect carts and the shopping space.
- Install Bluetooth® LE beacons inside the shops.
- Test the performance of the suggested solution and, if necessary, introduce the required changes.
Solution
The partner-integrator created a personal purchasing assistant that helps consumers save more time thanks to the search for goods. The shop navigation system and smart notifications on special offers were realized by our company. We together managed to offer the optimal software and hardware solution for solving the client’s problems.
This shopping mall solution looks like a regular shopping cart with a tablet. A visitor takes the cart, inputs the name of the dish (or uploads his list of purchases), the system provides him with the recipe and starts the trip around the shop. Navigine platform tracks the tablet with the help of Bluetooth® LE beacons installed inside the shop and leads buyers to the necessary department or goods, choosing the most suitable routes. Moreover, this system sends clients special push notifications on promotions and discounts. All these offers are personalized notifications based on the analysis of the previous purchasing experience and supermarket consumer behavior.
Such shopping carts simplify internal navigation in big supermarkets, provide an improved interactive experience, and increase the efficiency of digital marketing tools. Moreover, retailers can take advantage of such systems thanks to extended customer flow monitoring. The solution gathers analytics of buyers’ traffic and behavior and represents the whole picture in the form of heat and traffic maps. In terms of clients, our joint solution is not only a useful personal shopping assistant but also a safe technology that does not require a mobile connection, GPS and does not collect personalized data.
Technical realization
In the process of executing the task, Navigine faced various technical problems, for example:
- Special safety cases for placing tablets in. To prevent thefts and damage, the shop administration decided to place all devices in metal cases attached to the handle of the cart. The metal box negatively affected the possibilities of the tablet, reducing the quality of an input signal from a Bluetooth® beacon.
- The absence of various sensors on the tablet became another obstacle for implementing shop navigation systems. Moreover, the rigid fixation of the tablet inside the box excluded any shaking and, thus, didn’t allow us to measure the number of steps and distance.
- The space inside the supermarket. The average accuracy within 2 m didn’t comply with the requirements of the trading space because the width of a standard row was less than 2 m and the navigation system was just unable to define the exact location of the client between two neighboring rows.
Navigine managed to solve all the above-mentioned problems by doubling the number of Bluetooth® beacons, installed inside the shop, using complex algorithms, based on dozens of various parameters, and developing a traffic pattern along with the shop. We also developed the correct grid of the topology of the building that increased the accuracy of tracking traffic and reduced the probability of errors up to 5%.
Results
At present, the carts equipped with a highly technological navigation system are available in 98 supermarkets all around Finland.
The most significant economic effects are the following:
- Increasing sales.
- Increasing the average check by 6%.
- Increasing Kesko brand awareness.
- The efficiency of marketing and advertising campaigns – half of all the users of the SmartCart application got special push notifications, 25% of buyers followed the recommended routes to the places with advertised goods. The conversion of such marketing tools reached 6%.
The project of ‘smart’ carts was realized in the first pilot shops together with the Navigine team. After developing the most suitable layout of beacons Bluetooth® Low Energy and setting the algorithms, the retailer got a possibility to install the customer location mapping software in other shops on his own.
Furthermore, thanks to the advanced experience of Navigine specialists, the client can use general settings for all shops and also decrease expenses and time spent on additional maintenance. At present, the client can implement this system without any additional costs.
