iBeacon technology seems to be of increasing interest for mobile moment-of-truth research. In recent years, large companies have been using this technology, from the retail industry to music concert organizers and film festivals.
Studies show that mobile survey response rates are increasing and dropout rates are decreasing. This means more responses and more engagement from your audience, and more engagement means more chances of your audience coming back.
A few years ago, at the Marketing Research Association’s Insights & Strategy conference, ZoomRX’s Sriram Subramaniam presented to researchers the potential and potential problems of iBeacon, saying “the technology doesn’t always work the way you might expect it to.”
However, iBeacon has great potential to reveal new moments of truth in the customer experience . Now, let’s learn a little more about what iBeacon is and how to leverage it for research.
What is iBeacon?
iBeacons are low-cost, easy-to-install devices ideal for location-based mobile market research .
iBeacons use Bluetooth technology to communicate with nearby mobile devices and perform actions such as asking a customer to take a survey.
Using iBeacon in moments of truth
Moments of truth are those moments during the experience that make lithuania phone number break the customer and company's decision or relationship.
AG Lafley, president of Protect & Gamble, defines the moment of truth as, “the moment when the consumer is looking at the store shelf and trying to decide which product to buy.”
When we gather information about what happened at the time, there is a delay. People respond with vague and fuzzy memories. Instead of getting the truth, we are getting a pale reflection of what happened at the time of truth.
How important is it to get feedback in moments of truth , rather than waiting a week or a month to gather memories and rationalizations?
P&G built two full-scale simulation stores in Geneva and Cincinnati to engage customers and conduct MOT (moments of truth) research as they selected items from the shelves in these stores.
Perhaps the most effective technique is to recreate the MOTs and study them in a controlled environment. However, most of us do not have the capacity to build two stores.
Here, iBeacon can be an easier way to investigate these moments of truth in the customer experience.
Surveys with iBeacon vs. GPS
In June 2013, Apple announced the iBeacon standard as an ideal indoor positioning system for conducting real-time research. It overcomes many of the problems of GPS and Near Field Communication (NFC).
GPS has a larger margin of error than iBeacon, which can identify transmitters from a few inches, several yards, or more than 10 yards away. GPS simply does not have this level of accuracy, it can give the same latitude and longitude, if this were inside a mall it could be a Macy's store above a Sears store.