iBeacons: a bird's-eye view on 2016 trends

In this post I'll take a look at the iBeacon trend. 

iBeacon is a new technology brought by Apple to facilitate interactions between mobile apps and the physical world using a new variation of the bluetooth signal that spend less energy and not need any pairing action between the devices. This solution is part of the IoT (Internet of Things) movement to provide more integration among devices seamlessly and without much of user effort.   

The iBeacon term is therefore used for a lot of designations, meaning nowadays not only the Apple solution, but it's derivatives solutions and copycats, also could be used to state anything about the software protocol, the complete marketing solution or its singular device that is the center piece of the solution: a stand alone coin sized hardware device that emits "the beacon", a low-energy Bluetooth signal that is sensed by mobile apps if they are coded using Apple's SDK, a piece of standardized software that interprets the iBeacon signal and needs to be inside the mobile app code, available for both iOS and Android models.

Following are one example of how a complete iBeacon solution might work for your company (image from Rover) and which is typically the software and services sold by many companies alike in the market.

This new technology was conceived to make it easier for companies to integrate brick-and-mortar stores to their internet content and applications.To understand more about this new technology and how they could foster omni-channel marketing strategies, please visit here


Let's now take a look at Google trend topics about iBeacon and its protocol competitor from Google, the EddyStone.


i. Change in interest over Time


Since its first appearance in 2013 we see a clear peak a year later by July/2014 and so far the interested is clearing decreasing, mostly because of a unclear vendor segmentation, some lack of standard and quality in the beacon hardware products and lack of user traction, in a few words: you need to have beacons installed in your store, a mobile app iBeacon enabled and the app downloaded to the user phone with a internet connection that when passing by your door they receive a notification. Some barriers need to be broke and perhaps EddyStone, that is seen to be rising (in the moment that iBeacon is falling), could be the answer. The Eddystone protocol will be native integrated with the Android OS, it means there's no need to have an specific app to launch.

 ii. Regional Interests


Seams China and India is currently the countries that is focusing the most on iBeacons (at least in the Google search), perhaps because as hardware providers, they see an opportunity to make it big producing large scale mini devices (they are specialized in that) at lower prices - as pricing is (at least here in Brazil) the major barrier for the beacons to become more established for commercial use. Making a rough comparison, in Brazil (due to taxes) a beacon will cost almost 100% of it's original price, making very hard to sell the solution to retailers and others.
iii. Related Searches



Taking a look at the related searches, despite the obvious keyword variations about ibeacons, beacons, android and apple, we can see clearly the top ibeacon solution provider at the momento: 'Estimote'. With a clear business model, they sell fancy beacons with a much more understandable and usabel (by software developers) SDK  with a freemium business model to facilitate developers and business users to start using beacon solutions. Visit Estimote here.

If you need more information about iBeacon in Brazil, look for Smartcon.Mobi 

Customer behavior shifts during Brazil's recession

The last couple years in Brazil's economy was presenting a real challenge for all its population, from lower to higher classes the optimism about 'good times to come' is lowering by the month.

Even the joy of the samba people is not resisting this time of recession and political challenges, making 72% of the population worried about losing their job in the next year. [more details]

This survey shows a consumer behavior shift in Brazil that is becoming different from other countries that faced similar recession and/or political crisis in recent history. These peculiarities, if well understood and assessed, could become real opportunities for retail companies.


The 5 main customer behavior shifts in Brazil



1. Let the searching for savings begins


75% of the population are actively looking for sales, making the decision to buy even if they need to wait for a promotion campaign or sales seasoning, expending time and shopping multiple brands to if it represents the best deal. [more details]


2. Brand loyalty? Only poured with sales

33% didn't abandon their brands, but they are buying in (19%) smaller quantities or (14%)  awating for promotion coupons or some sales to purchase.[more details]


3. Watch me now, cause I'm going down

21% of consumers traded down to less expensive products and 60% don't intend to go back even if the tides were turned. For those among A to AA class brands the note is clear: you already lost 12% of your customer base.[more details]

4. Beer and make-up to the help

5% of consumers are trading up, but only in certain categories like beers (15%) and beauty and cosmetics (9%). They stated that this categories cheaper is directly related to lower quality.

5. Atacarejo is key. 

Consumers are changing channels to discounts chains and cash-a-carry formats, the 'Atacarejo' (combining Retail and Wholesale), One bad news here (for me and my peers) is that online commerce is gaining too much traction as channel in the present context.

Some ideas to start...


Clear understand of your customer demographics and segmentation, reaching them where they are more sensitive. Coupons, sales offerings, added-value products and ad campaigns need to be aimed correctly, if not, they could end in losing customers rather than just company budget. 

Analytics investments is key, as stated above, now its the proper time to hire some good analytics professional and dig deeper on very granular data to reach for that 20% singular segment of customer that could end up valuing more than the 80% of the total 'sales looking pumas' around in this jungle days of recession.

Full stack of products and prices, being clear in your value proposition and stating a transparent price structure position could be a winner in presenting a trade-off in quality and price that could reach down and up-traders in their best intentions, not hurting any brand image and making customer identification.

Eficiency, Efiency, Efiency. This is such a cliche theme that needles to say, specially in times like these, efiency will bring not just low cost of operations that also improve the quality of our work making more valuable products and services becoming a loop of positive events that will drive excellence in results and further better brand positioning.


Source: McKinsey Global Consumer Sentiment Survey 2016.