ProximIoT: A Proximity-based Product Marketing Platform

The broad acceptance and deployment of smartphone and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies presents a first-class opportunity for strengthening product marketing via interaction between businesses and their in-store customers within physical stores. Knowledge and tracking of the physical proximity of customers to particular products can extend successful recommendation strategies for product marketing applied in online stores to physical stores. Thus, there is an opportunity for businesses to utilize the potential of smartphones and IoT for organizing advertising and promotion campaigns with better results compared to traditional techniques. This paper presents an IoT platform developed for proximity marketing, which collects information related to user locations in real time within the sales area and processed in correlation with historical data. The platform analyzes the aggregated data for optimal decision making by marketing departments and performs targeted interaction with consumers in real time through automated messaging. The IoT platform operation is based on Bluetooth beacon devices installed in the business sales area, combined with smartphones owned by customers. The aim of developing the ProximIoT platform is to improve the effectiveness of promotional activities put in place by businesses, as well as overall customer experience.