A store employee, Diego Aguirre, demonstrated an internal application running on iPod Touches that, for the last few weeks, has had the ability to show the in-store location of a shopper who has come to pick up a purchase.
Knowing the shoppers' in-store location could also be used to send targeted offers right to their mobile device, too.
Currently, the shopper's in-store location on the app's map is live in about 800 stores and the "deals nearby" functionality is live today in fewer stores.
For more on iBeacons, you can check out our writeup of Estimote, a hardware device that uses Bluetooth LE to help retailers communicate with consumers based on in-store location and more.
Target says that it does collect data from the mobile app to understand shopping trends and preferences, but the beacon data is specific to in-store location and will be used to enhance the shopping experience.
Some of the new investment dollars RetailNext received will be used to add to its existing suite of technologies, as it looks to boost its research and development spending and hunts for new in-store location and predictive analytics applications for the data it's receiving.
"The minimal overlap in store locations and their out-of-town, one-stop retailer approach complements the work we have done on the high street with Blacks and Millets … I am excited by the future prospects this holds for the JD group".
A day or two before Thanksgiving, Wal-Mart will post maps on Facebook and Walmart.com with the in-store locations of hot items.
For background, Shopkick provides an in-store, location-based mobile shopping platform, Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store.
Shopkick, which is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, SV Angel and others, provides an in-store, location-based mobile shopping platform, Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store.
If your business is one where users frequent your in-store locations, like in the example above, the same general guidelines for your phone number apply to finding your locations.
