Location Based Marketing

Imagine you are in Barcelona. It is a hot summer afternoon. Your smartphone knows you are fond of chilled fruit juices, and out of the blue you receive a message: there’s a juice bar just around the corner. They offer the best juice in town, plus a 10% discount and immediate satisfaction. You feel happy. Words similar to these are regularly heard from those who hope to gain from selling Location Based Marketing (LBM) concepts. And they have been talking about it for years. Yet the number of television viewers in a country such as Belgium is greater than the total number of users of Foursquare globally. Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and Brightkite are the most prevailing LBM platforms, although others exist too. Why so much talk and so little action?

LBM是基于位置服务（LB）的进步的后代。像移动GIS系统一样，基于位置的服务利用无线通信将数字地图数据从服务器传输到现场设备。但是，LB的目的不是收集旨在创建映射或更新现有数据库的数据，而是要帮助人们在附近取代自己并找到所需目的地的方式。从技术的角度来看，LBS系统可以定义为GIS，该GIS将信息与持有LBS设备的用户的位置进行环境相关。假设是基于位置的服务嵌入了智能手机中，非常支持零售商，酒店连锁店或加油站的营销目标。值得注意的是，当前所有Internet连接的50％都超过50％是通过支持位置的智能手机。这项技术已经到位，但是为什么要在行人手中的LBS系统或安装在汽车仪表板上的销售量会增加销量？

The key question is: what is the correlation between a potential customer’s location and his or her shopping or purchasing behaviour? I think the relationship is rather weak. The only situation I can imagine the link between location and purchasing behaviour being particularly strong is when people are driving through unfamiliar territory and find their car in need of fuel, their stomach in need of food, or when night is approaching and they need somewhere to stay. I think the amount of money in one’s wallet has by far the greatest impact on purchasing behaviour. Let’s be honest – most people nowadays are crawling through a swamp of debt: they’ve already spent the money that will be in their next pay cheque and are struggling to keep on top of the monthly interest payments. All LBM success stories seem to involve discounts or gifts and, most embarrassingly, LBS users are being portrayed as brainless morons chasing after immediate satisfaction without any regard for privacy issues.