Perfect light,

precise location

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Bringing the power of GPS indoors

Even though the technology’s fairly new, it’s already hard to imagine life without GPS. Almost everywhere on the planet, people depend on navigation and mobile apps for location-specific information and services. GPS lets people find their way from place to place, get information about their immediate vicinity, and work efficiently.

Imagine if you could bring the power of GPS indoors. Retailers could enhance the shopping experience with wayfinding and in-store promotions, giving shoppers new reasons to buy. Hospitals could use wayfinding to help patients arrive on time for appointments and reduce stress. Businesses could help warehouse staff work more efficiently with easier product finding and location-based stocking instructions. Employers could give employees lighting and temperature controls for their workspaces, or could suggest nearby empty meeting rooms based on current location, making them more comfortable and productive.

All of this and more is possible today with indoor positioning from Philips

Indoor positioning system by Philips Lighting - enhance the shopping experience

Frictionless shopping with indoor GPS

Today’s shoppers are more sophisticated than ever, using multiple channels to search for and purchase the items they need. Retailers are continually looking for ways to offer shoppers a frictionless shopping experience: a shopper journey that is easy and inspirational, that seamlessly and conveniently integrates online resources, mobile apps, and the store, that allows shoppers to find all products quickly, that offers instant support, and that features relevant and timely offers and information.

Indoor positioning allows shoppers and store staff to receive directions to products or to receive location-based notifications. It allows retailers to engage customers in a more meaningful way, and to use location data analytics to measure marketing impact and assess store operations. Indoor positioning can deliver extraordinary value to retailers.

To help illustrate the benefits the Philips Indoor positioning system can deliver, we commissioned research among shoppers to identify what shoppers value in retailers’ mobile store apps and what indoor location services they would like to see included in these apps. We concluded that shoppers have a genuine interest in location based services and that these services can increase store mobile app usage.

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The four benefits of LED based indoor positioning system

Shopper convenience
Shopper convenience
Shopper convenience

Indoor positioning can make a shopper’s journey more enjoyable and efficient, with features such as wayfinding, “show me where I am,” optimal shopping routes, location-specific information, and “come help me.”
Shopper engagement
Shopper engagement
Shopper engagement

Engaged shoppers stay in store longer, enjoy the experience more, and often spend more. Retailers can engage shoppers with location-based promotions, information, and notifications, and can offer social experiences such as surveys, reviews, and games.
Staff and store efficiency
Staff and store efficiency
Staff and store efficiency

Indoor positioning can optimize a retailer’s efficiency through wayfinding, dynamic routing for faster order picking, and location-based staff instructions and service support.
Data analytics
Data analytics
Data analytics

The location data generated by indoor positioning can be used to analyze shopper traffic and behavior so that retailers can optimize store operations and measure the impact of marketing events.

Philips indoor positioning system: the game changer in retail

Retailers who want to enjoy these benefits of indoor location services need a reliable, accurate, and affordable indoor positioning system. Until recently, they had to settle for systems that required them to deploy additional, often battery-powered, devices in their stores, that offered questionable performance with low accuracy and high network latency, and that were cumbersome to install and maintain.

Now, with the game-changing Philips indoor positioning system, retailers can enjoy instant, real-time, hyper-accurate positioning to less than half a meter, and orientation simply by using Philips’ high-quality and energy-efficient LED lighting.

How indoor positioning works

Lighting is already installed everywhere people go inside, so it’s natural to use the lighting system to create a positioning grid, rather than installing an entirely separate infrastructure. Philips indoor positioning does just this, using Philips visible light communications (VLC). With VLC, each fixture sends its own unique identifier to a shopper’s smartphone, allowing the system to accurately pinpoint the shopper’s location in the store.

Since VLC is embedded directly in Philips LED luminaires, it requires no additional installation, maintenance, or power. The luminaires provide all of the benefits of LED-based illumination, including dramatic energy savings over conventional lighting systems, while also providing the infrastructure for delivering indoor location-based services.

Beside the LED fixtures the Philips indoor positioning system comes with an iOS and Android SDK and cloud service, which retailers or their application developers can use to embed positioning capabilities into their mobile apps.

How Philips indoor positioning sytem works

Private, safe, and ready to go

Philips respects users’ privacy. We have designed our system to ensure that no personal data is requested, gathered, or stored. Mobile device locations are logged anonymously. The system stores no link to user IDs or names.

Learn how the French
hypermarket, Carrefour
made use of the Philips Indoor positioning system

Download the article

Read the online case study

Partnering for success

Philips collaborates with industry leaders in digital mapping, product search, app development, retail IT and analytics to extend its offering and deliver a comprehensive end-to-end capability to retailers while ensuring seamless integration with several mobile customer engagement platforms and applications. We can work with your partner of choice, or can refer you to our proven partners in our partner program.

News

What’s on special this week? Let Philips supermarket lighting help tell you

Philips Lighting today announced it had expanded its innovative LED connected lighting indoor positioning system in the US. At the LIGHTFAIR International tradeshow in San Diego, the company announced a new luminaire, the Philips Day-Brite LED Linear Suspended LBX, adding to its award-winning indoor positioning portfolio.

Read the press release

‘Ah I saw that on the news!’, Prime Minister of The Netherlands Mark Rutten about BlueJay’s indoor domestic drone showcased at the Hannover Messe. Made possible by Philips Visible Light Communication technology.

BlueJay last weekend also hosted the world’s first Drone Café where you could order a drink served to you by an autonomously flying drone.

BlueJay at the Hannover Messe

Find out more

Philips reveals location analytics at Light & Building tradeshow

Watch the video

Philips Lighting wins first indoor positioning project in the Middle East with United Arab Emirates supermarket aswaaq

Philips announces its first connected lighting indoor positioning win in the Middle East with United Arab Emirates (UAE) based retailer aswaaq, one of the world’s most innovative supermarkets and community malls. The new system uses lights that act as a positioning system which allows customers to use smartphones to access new location based services. This empowers the retailer to provide a smooth shopping experience for their customers, which may help boost sales and customer loyalty.

Read press release

Infographic

Philips named Top Supplier Retail 2016

For the installation of the Philips indoor positioning technology by the French retailer Carrefour in its hypermarket in Lille the German retail institute EHI awarded Carrefour with the Retail Technology Award 2016 for Best Customer Experience. Subsequently Philips received the Top Supplier Retail 2016 award.

Full-service provider

A successful indoor positioning system requires a partnership - your expert business and customer knowledge, together with our system expertise and developer support.

Our dedicated specialists work with you every step of the way, from initial concept to fully realized system, with the following services:

Lighting design

Create or review lighting design so that it support indoor positioning

Installation and venue enablement
Installation of the lighting system, venue enablement, and testing of indoor positioning performance

Developer support

Support and advice for application developers to enable seamless integration of indoor positioning in mobile apps

Licenses and service

Licensing of the positioning software and cloud service usage and customer service

Shopping in a new era - Trends in retail

Would you like to learn more about the latest trends in retail?

Read RetailScene magazine

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For more information on how Philips can help you shape your world with light, contact us.