Blueprint Projects is one company that has unleashed the potential of Bluetooth by enabling shopping centres to cash in on sending text alerts to customers without charging their shoppers a penny.

Blueprint Projects' Stephen Brooks says that instead of charging the shopper for receiving unsolicited text alerts when they enter a shopping centre, they charge the advertisers. Then shoppers are given the option of whether or not to accept or decline the message.

"The unique part of it is that if you are a regular visitor to the centre, you won't get the same message. You are not bombarding shoppers with content," says Brooks.

"The other unique thing is you need to have your Bluetooth enabled and set to discover as well so there are many ways to switch off."

The system has been trialled 'very successfully' by a number of retailers and high street banks and the idea now is to get shopping centres interested. "We are talking to a number of different people," says Brooks. "There are advertisers just waiting for a network to be set up."

Arqiva has developed a number of different ways shopping centres can make additional revenue from wireless technology.

Having originally focused on a natural hosting by providing an infrastructure in shopping centres for the mobile operators, who pay a fixed amount to the centre, Arqiva is now taking it further.

Arqiva's Nick Hyam explains: "More recently we have started to talk to the big shopping centre operators, in particular Capital Shopping Centres and Westfield. The options were doing the same sort of thing but this time from a wireless/WiFi perspective.

"The landowners have been getting quite excited by the potential of using wireless. First and foremost it is to improve some of the services they currently provide in the shopping centre, for example improved retailer communications.

"But the other side is to use wireless technology to deliver additional revenue. This is very much based around being able to provide wireless access while people are within the shopping centre. This is already fairly prevalent in coffee shops where the customer pays to sit with their coffee and get on with their work while they sit there. That is restricted to individual retailers but certainly shopping centre managers and landowners are looking to see if they can provide this service through the main malls in core seating areas. They can also offer it to their tenants as well."

Contacts

Blueprint Projects: 01787 478082

Arqiva: 01962 823434

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend