iBeacon Testing Expands to 100 American Eagle Outfitters Stores

Back in November, shopping rewards app Shopkick launched its shopper-detecting ‘shopBeacon’ in a few departments of Macy’s stores in New York and San Francisco and now, the company is expanding its trial of Apple’s forthcoming Bluetooth location-sensing technology iBeacon, to 100 American Eagle Outfitter locations across the country, according to a report by GigaOM.

Apple’s iBeacon technology uses Bluetooth Low Energy to detect the presence of iPhones and other smartphones as they enter and leave a beacon’s limited range. With the consumer’s permission, the beacons are then able to form proximity-based connections with those devices to share retail information and promotions etc.

“In Shopkick’s case, customers download its app and give it permission to identify itself to searching shopBeacons. When a shopBeacon detects the phone’s signals, it turns the phone into a kind of personal shopping assistant, which not only knows exactly where you’re shopping, but often your tastes based on the information you share with Shopkick.”

Shopkick notes its partnership with American Eagle Outfitters will be the largest trial of iBeacon technology in the country, once it goes live next month. While American Eagle stores are much smaller outfits than Macy’s, Shopkick says it can still use iBeacon’s sensitive proximity-detection capabilities to tailor the experience.

“At first, shopBeacon will be used to “greet” customers with the Shopkick app as they enter the store and give customers push alerts on overall in-store deals and discounts as well as personalized recommendations based on a shopper’s app preferences. But Shopkick and American Eagle said they soon would begin offering more location-targeted info, such as pushing offers on jeans when you enter the denim section.”

Apple has recently introduced iBeacon at all of its retail stores across the U.S. For now, we can only hope Canada will get the technology pretty soon as well.