Retailers Mine Smartphone Data to Boost Sales

Midwest gasoline stations are collecting information from customers’ smartphones to sell more fuel — and it’s working.

January 08, 2014

RICHMOND HILL, Ontario – Smart antennas stealthily capture data from cellphones and then transmit discounts to that smartphone as the driver pulls into a gasoline station, Information Week reports. The result? Eight thousand more gallons of gasoline sold per month than previously.

The strategy is simple. iSign Media Corp. employs smart antennas to locate and communicate with Bluetooth devices within a 30 foot to 300 foot radius of a specific area, in this case, 250 gasoline stations in Indiana and Ohio. The stations relayed advertisements, such as 10-cent per gallon discounts, to the cellphones of motorists who just arrived at the station.

Alex Romanov, iSign’s president and CEO, said the instant discount spurred more sales of gasoline. To redeem the offer, customers had to go inside the store to show the coupon, which increased foot traffic. Around 30% of customers who received the discount offer acted on it.

Other data collected provides information on how many customers responded to the offer per location, how long the customer took to respond to the offer, how many ignored the offer, and how frequently the customer stopped by the gasoline station. The antennas also are connected with the POS systems and capture data on how many coupons are redeemed with a credit or debit card, or cash payment.

Romanov said the information gathered was anonymous. “What we capture is totally private. Our data are preference-based and predictive,” he said. In addition to the Ohio and Indiana gasoline stations, Mac’s has 1,400 antennas installed at its Canadian locations.

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