IRJET- Proximity Marketing using Beacon Technology

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 05 | May 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.211 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 523
Proximity marketing using beacon technology
Dhanyatha N S 1, Rhea Chengappa C 2, Sridevi Patil 3, Swetha H L 4 ,Dr. Madhu B K5
1,2,3,4 Students, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Vidya Vikas Institute of Engineering and Technology,
Mysore, Karnataka, India
5 Professor and Head, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Vidya Vikas Institute of Engineering and
Technology, Mysore, Karnataka, India
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Abstract: We present our work on the mobile
based indoor positioning shopping application
leading to the development of automatic
advertisements delivery services based on user’s
location. . In this research, we use a network of
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons deployed
in a large shopping store thereby constructing
the notification environment. The Server
component the Smartphone component and the
beacons (BLE) constitute the BLE based system.
This BLE based Smartphone application detects
the location of customers in the store with the
help of Bluetooth on the user’s Smartphone by
using BLE technology, this data of the user’s
location will be sent to the server component by
WIFI, and the server component sends
personalized promotions based on the user’s
location such as mobile advertisements to the
customers’ smart phones.
INTRODUCTION
Technology innovation’s goal is to simplify life of
humans and making day to day’s work easier and
faster. Shopping is one regular activity that
human beings spend a large amount of time .[1]
According to a survey conducted by the US
Bureau of Labor, an average customer spends his
1.4 hours each day on shopping. According to a
study carried out by CISCO Internet Business
Solution Group , the best
Reasons for customers to use new technology
are to find best price in the market (63%), to
save time in the market (47%), to find best
assortment in the market (26%) and to get best
quality available in the market (25%). [1]
In the 21st century, portable terminals such as
smart phones are used extensively.[4]. Due to
the increase in the usage of Smartphone devices,
advertisers are reaching to their customers in
different ways using their smart phones.
Smartphone’s marketing is appeared to be a
widely used advertising tool. Smartphone
marketing has different forms, like SMS
marketing, social media marketing and software
applications that enable location-based
marketing. [3]
Knowing the importance of a Smartphone in a
user’s life, many of the services using positional
information of the user’s are widely used, and
the indoor positioning technology is being
focused like never before. One of the
technological services provided through smart

phones is location-based application, that can
deliver contents such as advertisements or
suggesting specific places to the users based on
his/her locations. This type of technological
applications can be used in several places ,such
as ,in malls, streets, airports, shopping stores and
bus stations in this paper we specifically report
about a network of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
beacons, deployed on a shopping store
developed using The full deployment of a
number of beacons over an area of the shopping
store[3].
There are many technologies that can be used to
find the location. Like the Global Position System
(GPS) technology GPS technology is widely used
in many applications to provide us with location-
based content. But the main disadvantage of
using GPS technology is the high level of battery
consumption of mobile phones as a result of
being connected to satellites. Google maps are
one of the applications using GPS technology.
However GPS tracking is considered as a privacy
invasion which can be a disadvantage of this
technology. To overcome this disadvantage
there is a need to find a new and better
technology for indoors.[3]
Linking a particular position where the beacon
is deployed to a specific notification to be sent to
the user makes it easier to set the Position of the
notification. Using Received Signal Strength
Indicator (RSSI) of the installed beacons, users
are able to receive notifications from other close
proximity beacons by managing the proximity
information got from RSSI. This helps the user
not to miss any notification he needs to receive.
The criteria we need to remember to do so are :
there should be an adequate distance of the user
from the beacon to receive notification, and to
construct this environment, a necessary distance
between the neighboring beacons is
important.[4]
System Architecture
As shown in the figure 1, the System is initialised.
A customer with a android based application
,designed particularly for proximity marketing
installed in his smartphone identified in the first
place, then all the surrounding beacons present
around the user is scanned and the UUIDs of
beacons is got.
The UUIDs of the beacons are then transmitted
to the server through WiFi. Then the location of
the customer is identified using RSSI .later by
knowing the customer’s position in the store
using the knowledge of the nearest beacon, the
related data based on his position is obtained
from the database.
The Customized Marketing Messages are then
generated based on the customer’s
Current location and profile.
The generated Messages are delivered to the
customer and are displayed on android based
Smartphone application.[1]
Figure 1: System architecture

I. THE IDEAL WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY
FOR OUR SOLUTION
The essential requisites for our report are:
• Low energy consumption: a battery used, tiny
coin-cell batteries, can run for months or years.
Moreover, it doesn’t have the risk of draining
out of battery and enables the system.
• Middle range
•High precision, as it takes place in a relatively
small navigation areas, superior errors must not
occur.
• Safe connection.
• The positions of various devices are read
simultaneously.
• Real-time communication: in just few seconds
,the procedure of getting a connection between
two devices, data being transferred and the
connection shutting down, must be made.
• Compatibility: no electromagnetic interference
should occur in other sensitive electronics
devices, when radio devices coexist to with other
radio transceivers
• There is a necessity for the system to have the
ability to communicate with services like
Cellular network and the Internet.[1]
II. PROXIMITY MARKETING
Every business works hard for customer
retention that is to get new customers, maintain
the present customers. This retention can be
achieved using different marketing methods
which include traditional methods and modern
methods. The traditional marketing methods
may be putting up advertisements in radio,
newspapers, websites, television, magazines and
multimedia on cell phones etc. As technological
revolution took place, modern way of marketing
rose into fame called location-based mobile
advertising (LBA). Proximity marketing is
another name for LBA which provides
advertisements according to their geographical
location of the users. It consists of location-based
services in addition to mobile advertising.
These days, location-based advertising is an
important and effective marketing tool for both
advertisers and customers. As the consumers
always carry their smart phones, location-based
advertising is time efficient and gives them a
better knowledge of specific offers. The reasons
of why proximity marketing is effective are
1) Personalized: Knowing what the users are
interested in and show them something relevant
to their interest based on their location.
2) Timely: one of the main features of LBA ,the
ability to target users at specific moments.
3) Targeted: According to an IAB UK study, 46%
of people use blocking tools for marketing as it is
irrelevant, but when they are targeted, getting
blocked is less likely. According to IAB UK study
79% of the respondents said that proximity
marketing is an important part of their
organization’s marketing strategy.[3]
III. The Beacon technology
Beacon is a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) based
technology, which helps in indoor positioning
system. Beacon is low power consuming and cost
effective compared to other systems.
Beacon transmits data packets during regular
intervals of time and smart phones can receive
this data.
An advertising data packet may consist of four
main parts of information as shown in Figure 2:

• The proximity UUID: a 16-byte string
identifier used for differentiation between a
large set of related beacons present.
• The major number: is used to differentiate a
smaller subset of beacons within the larger set.
• The minor number: is used for individual
beacons identification. Every beacon has a
unique minor number, this helps in knowing
customer’s position
• TX power: used to determine the proximity of
the customer to the beacons.[1]
Figure 2 : BLE Packet
IV. RSSI(Received Signal Strength
Indicator)
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)
indicates the strength of the beacon's signal in a
Smartphone.
The strength of the signal depends on the
distance and broadcasting Power value.
Figure3 shows the received RSSI from mobile
phone when beacon is 1m away. RSSI varies
vigorously from -61dB to -80dB as shown in the
figure3.[2]
Figure 3 : RSSI values in 1m distance
V. Beacons:
Are small in size, cheap devices that transmit
minute amounts of data through Bluetooth Low
Energy (BLE) up to 50 meters. Beacons are used
for indoor location technology as it transmits
their identifier (UUID) to nearby smart phones.
Beacon is one-way transmitter to the receiving
Smartphone with a specific application installed
which interacts with the beacons. The use of this
component in the system is that it enables
receiving device to perform actions when in
shorter distance to a beacon and to track users in
the store.[1]
VI. Smartphone Application:
Customers who use the system need to
First install Smartphone Android application,
then the customer needs to take up a registration
stage, which requires them to put up their
personal information and their personal
preferences and choices. Once the registration is
done, the personalized advertising messages and
notifications is automatically sent to the
customers’ smart phones when they are in near
proximity to a beacon information’s is then

transmitted to the main server using the WIFI or
3G. The data sent is stored in Server database.[1]
VII. Server Application:
To collect, store and analyze trajectories of
customers inside the shop ,an application was
proposed. The customers’ purchase records will
be updated to the server via the application. The
System records the purchases details about the
quantity and value of the product bought by each
customer. The interaction of the customer with
the service provider and the purchase records
are stored in server database. A customer has
entered the shop after the registration stage, the
information regarding the registration details of
the customer is transmitted to the server from
the customers’ smart phones. Whenever a
customer has entered the shop, the Server
Application is notified by the customers’ smart
phone ,then the system will sends customized
advertisement messages to that customer’s
smart phone based on his/her preferences and
choices.[1]
Conclusion
Shopping experience can be enhanced, made
more pleasurable and efficient for the customers
by using proximity marketing. It helps the
system admin to enhance their relation with the
customers and strengthen their marketing
strategy and business planning through
promotion plans and personalized services that
will satisfy the customer’s needs and improves
the loyalty of the customers towards the
system[1].
As a future enhancement, we are working on
implementing a proximity marketing that can
work with IOS platform to deliver an
advertisement to the customers to help them get
the information in the right time and place. In
addition, the required experiments and testing
will be provided.[3]
References.
[1] Dalal ZAIM,Mostafa BELLAFKIH “Bluetooth
Low Energy (BLE) Based Geomarketing System”
[2] Patrick Dickinson, Gregorz Cielniak, Olivier
Szymanezyk, Mike Mannion” Indoor Positioning
of Shoppers Using a Network of Bluetooth Low
Energy Beacons”
[3] Rajat Pugaliya1 , Jaydip Chabhadiya2 , Nirav
Mistry3 and Ankit Prajapati4” Smart Shoppe
using Beacon
[4] Lamya AlBraheem, AmalAl-Abdulkarim, Arwa
Al-Dosari, Leena Al-Abdulkarim, Raghad Al-
Khudair, Wafa AlJasser, Weam Al-Angari” Smart
City Project using Proximity Marketing
Technology”
[5] Shuhei Hashimoto, Shuhei Yamamoto, Ryo
Nishide and Hideyuki Takada ” A Notification
Environment Using User-Installed Beacons”
[6] Andrew Mackey§ , Petros Spachos§ ,
Konstantinos N. Plataniotis “Enhanced Indoor
Navigation System with Beacons and Kalman
Filters”

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