Retail Observer

JUNE 2016 RETAILOBSERVER.COM 47 P opwifi recently surveyed shared Wi-Fi quality and usage at a host of leading, consumer-facing service and retail brands across the U.S. Judged by sector, it wasn't coffee shops which offered the best quality Wi-Fi but restaurant and fast food chains, followed by department stores, general retail, and grocery chains. BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse, Taco Bell, Macy's, Lowe's, and Publix each topped their respective sectors in the survey, which also showed that the widespread availability of shared Wi-Fi is matched by the high quality of connections on offer. We measured Wi-Fi quality on a scale of zero to one, with anything above 0.6 representing a connection easily able to handle streaming video to a smartphone. The top 40 brands from our survey provided Wi-Fi ranging between 0.96 and 0.61 on our scale. Coffee shops may have been the pacesetters but every kind of retail and service brand imaginable now offers shared Wi-Fi, eager to meet customer expectations, which increasingly positions connectivity alongside other key amenities such as air-conditioning and restrooms. There's no doubting the value Wi-Fi provides to consumers. This is free data provided at indoor locations where it's often difficult to get a decent connection to the mobile network. To put a number on it, the top 40 brands in our survey delivered 13.5 Terabytes of data to our sample base of 350,000 smartphones during November 2015 alone. Scale that up to include every U.S. venue with shared Wi-Fi and every smartphone getting connected, and the volumes are mind-boggling. Keeping the coffee shop flag flying, shared Wi-Fi pioneer Starbucks was among the brands providing the greatest Wi-Fi value to consumers. Our study showed that smartphone users consumed more data per minute at Starbucks than at any other brand surveyed. Grocery chain Whole Foods Market was another leader in Wi-Fi value, delivering more connectivity by time than any other brand. In total, the top 40 brands from our survey delivered more than 68 years' of connectivity to our sample base in a single month! But while the benefit to the consumer is clear, what value does this Wi-Fi offer the brands that share it? Is it simply something they must offer to stay current, accepting that the profits which must be earned to provide it — as with those other public conveniences — will simply get flushed away? Not if they're smart about it. An in-store Wi-Fi network has the potential to be far more than a means for customers to access the Internet. It can be a direct, branded, two-way communication channel between a merchant and any customer who connects to the network. By nature it is location aware; if the customer is connected to the network then their presence in-store is all but guaranteed. It creates a wealth of opportunities to engage with customers and enhance their in-venue experience. At its simplest it can be used to deliver welcome messages to customers arriving in-store. More sophisticated use cases involve driving customers to particular parts of the store, or towards special offers. Clearly this has value to the business owner. It is also highly significant to any brand whose product is available for sale within a store. Central to the potential of shared Wi-Fi as a customer engagement mechanism is the fact that consumers love to get connected. As the findings from the Popwifi survey show, when given easy access to shared Wi-Fi, smartphone users consume with enthusiasm. And once the customer is connected, a significant hurdle to engagement has been removed. But, as with most things, simplicity is paramount. Every hoop through which a customer has to jump to get connected is a potential barrier to the connection and any engagement which may follow. Equally, it has to be simple for marketers themselves to use Wi-Fi as an engagement tool; without the need for any new equipment, and without them having to bother (or be bothered by) whichever team owns the infrastructure. If merchants bear this in mind they can tap into the true potential of shared Wi-Fi, encapsulated in an appealing symmetry: Any service or retail brand which keeps its customers connected is also positioning itself to keep connected to its customers. Dave Fraser, CEO of Popwifi creator Devicescape, has been designing, building, marketing, and managing software for more than 30 years. He was instrumental in the development of the Curated Virtual Network—which sits at the heart of Devicescape's multi-service Wi-Fi platform—and in its positioning for the delivery of enhanced connectivity, engagement and insight services to the telecom, mobile application, and retail verticals. RO

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