Retailers Find New Marketing Opportunities with Wearables
A recent announcement that Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance are working on an open-source network standard is likely to lead to even more investment in connected devices among retailers. The open-source network that the group is working to develop is supposed to make life easier for IoT hardware vendors and software developers, but it also serves a secondary purpose of assuring retailers investing in connected technology that their budgets aren’t being wasted. With a common IoT communication and control standard, smart devices will be even more reliable and seamless to use in the coming years.
“Open source will bring businesses more agility and enable them to process data quickly while simultaneously producing valuable insights,” says Heikki Nousiainen, chief technology officer at Aiven, a firm that develops managed cloud service hosting for software infrastructure services.
6 Ways Wearable Tech Is Reshaping Retail
Rather than being spooked by these new retail engagement strategies, surveys show most consumers are excited by them. Sixty-seven percent of wearables owners say they find dynamic user experiences that vary based on location “useful and exciting.”
Here are six examples of strategies that retailers can employ to improve the shopping experience using wearable technology.
Follow the Money: Will Wearables Inflect in 2020?
Apple is far ahead with Watch and Airpods, which may have sold 3 million units since Black Friday. Google meanwhile acquired Fitbit to buttress its wearables play. Amazon and Microsoft launched wearables lines in the past quarter, and smaller players like Bose and Snap are planting seeds for a wearables future.
There’s an underlying driver for this activity that goes back to the perennial analyst exercise of “following the money.” This is all about extrapolating product roadmaps based on tech giants’ motivations. This is often to future-proof their core businesses or diversify revenue in the face of maturing products.
December Focus: The Connected Consumer
When looking at several interlocking tech trends — wearables, IoT, smart devices, autonomous vehicles — one common thread emerges: our escalating connectivity as humans. All these technologies are increasingly melded with our senses as the computing “abstraction layer” diminishes.
In other words, device interfaces continue to get more intuitive and automatic. That can be seen in the progression of personal computing from UI milestones like the mouse to mobile-centric touch controls. Now, we have biometric tracking on the Apple Watch and ambient alerts to AirPods.
The “connected consumer” will be Street Fight’s editorial focus for the month of December.
How Wearables Are Changing Perceptions About Location Privacy
While firms that collect location data through mobile apps were once viewed as pariahs, a shift in attitudes has more consumers turning on location services for apps and taking advantage of the benefits that sharing this data can bring. Behind the changing attitude is a growing interest in wearables.
5 Ways Brands Are Using Wearables to Create Unique Marketing Moments
More than 250 million wearables are predicted to be in use by 2018. This presents an incredible opportunity for marketers looking to reach consumers not just based on their locations, but also based on their activity levels and personal interests. Here are five strategies that brand marketers are using.
Notifications on Apple Watch: How the Onus of Relevancy Will Shift From Consumer to Apps
The release of the Apple Watch puts greater emphasis on the need for contextual and helpful notifications, and if apps don’t answer this need with a more thoughtful approach to notifications, then Apple will very likely force their hand via the introduction of a filter for notifications…
Street Fight Daily: Airbnb’s Next Mega-Round, Samsung Debuts Mobile Payments
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Airbnb Is Raising A Monster Round At A $20B Valuation (TechCrunch)… Samsung Actually Stands A Fighting Chance In Mobile Payments (Quartz)… Uber Discloses Data Breach That May Have Affected 50,000 Drivers (GigaOm)…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Buys Moves, Lyft Puts Capital to Work
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… By Buying Moves, Facebook Acquires High-Value Passive Location Technology (GigaOm)… Lyft Puts New Megabucks to Work: Launches in 24 Cities, Cuts Prices Again, Drops All Fees (Recode)… Berg Insight: Mobile Location-Based Advertising will be worth $14.8B in 2018 (FierceWireless)…
Street Fight Daily: More Departures Hit Clinkle, Square Accepts Bitcoin
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
… More Exec Departures Hit Payments Startup Clinkle (Recode)… Square’s Online Marketplace Starts Accepting Bitcoin(GigaOm)… Mobile Q&A App Jelly Now Lets You Ask Location-Based Questions Routed To Nearby Users (TechCrunch)…
Mobile Dominates Local, but Are Wearables the Future?
Confirming a widely held belief, a new study from Yext found that the overwhelming majority of consumers – particularly those in younger generations – prefer accessing local information through a smartphone, even while a desktop computer is within reach. As the mobile market expands beyond smartphones into an array of internet connected devices, the next question for local technology firms is whether a new breed of mobile, and wearable, devices, might generate a similar opportunity…
How Using Wearables Data Can Strengthen Brands’ Outreach
Wearables have the ability to become a conduit to exciting new revenue streams, but it’s up to marketers to take advantage of the data these devices generate, and to create a marketing ecosystem that evolves through contextually-based experiences that matter to the consumer.