BEAM

There is considerable interest in Beacons from a range of end users including, leisure
(museums, theme parks, resorts) town centres, tourist attractions, libraries, municipal
buildings & hospitals etc; however the growth is in retail (shopping malls, wholesale, cash
and carry) to drive in-store advertising and promotions.
Beacons have a unique identifier and the message they trigger is pre-loaded from the internet
to the Beacon owner’s application on to the smartphone. Whilst it is relatively easy to
manage a small fleet of Beacons in terms of their identity and range there is a considerable
issue in managing large fleets of Beacons, not only within a specific store but regionally and
nationwide across say a wholesale or supermarket chain so the same message and offer is
given consistently to customers. We propose to develop a Beacon management system
known as BEAM, enabling fleet owners to manage them via the internet via a dashboard.
BEAM enables a Beacon owner to alert users (shoppers) to offers, triggered by Beacons; and
previously unavailable. Retailers can “let” the management of specific Beacons to suppliers
who may wish to exclusively promote their product in a category. In addition to providing
information, BEAM will provide a wealth of valuable anonymised data on customer shopping
behaviour enabling stores to improve their layout and offer.