This blog post will look at successful implementations of location based service campaign and with the use of academic literature, I will also analyse how this concept has the potential to influence a consumers spending habits. Although location based services can be used in other technological contexts, this blog post will only look at its’ marketing use through smartphone technologies.

What is location based service marketing?

The marketing of location based service’s (LBS) is a direct business to customer marketing approach used to deliver informative services, through the method of tracking a consumers geographical position to offer services from nearby businesses based on location (Pitta, 2011).

Adidas

Adidas created a campaign entitled “The full value of mobile’. Adidas worked with Google and iProspect to measure how its mobile searches affected its in store traffic, the campaign redirected consumers to the companies store location page on the brand’s website. The aim of this campaign was to drive sales to the adidas stores and achieved this with a 20% conversion rate of mobile store location use to in-store visits (ThinkwithGoogle, 2013).

Thoughts:

An application like this requires a data roaming package and could result in expensive bills for consumers on fixed or limited internet usage price plan and might not be practical for everyone.

Best western hotel

Best western create a location based service campaign that was made to target potential hotel bookers near their airport locations. The location specific application worked in partnership with Paypal to create a digital strategy that allowed consumers to book hotels from as soon as they land or view their hotel locations on a map. The concept was created in an attempt to eliminate the sometimes impossible notion of having reserve hotel room weeks in advance (DeVoren, 2013). The aim of this campaign was to drive booking sales and saw over 20% increase in revenue during their first two months of their spring promotion (Paskin, 2010).

Thoughts :
Paypal payments require a 5 days waiting acceptance period and might not be suitable for consumers who do not have the sufficient funds to meet the hotel fees upfront, additionally the concept of paying through Paypal makes this services only convenient to existing Paypal users.

O2

O2 UK a telephone service provider, saw success in 2013 with the companies mobile phone application, Priority moments. The O2 app is mobile loyalty program that provides exclusive rewards, deals and sales to its customers, that are sent through the companies mobile app, websites and text messaging services, the offers are chosen based on consumer interest and location. The Priority moments app works in collaboration with a wide variety of business that offer discounted and even free promotional produce under the O2 brand to create awareness (campaign live, 2013)

The aim of this concept was to create a brand loyalty scheme that encourage users to stay with the brand through discounts schemes that would not be available after their contracts or mobile services with the brand ended. 18 months after the launch in 2012, Priority Moments acquired millions customers, which was the equivalent of 100% brand participation, making it one of the UK’s fastest growing loyalty programs.(marketingsociety, 2014)

Thoughts:
This concept is great and as users of this application I can personally say that having the options to buy from familiar brands at discount prices has at times influenced my spending habits. The concept could also on the other be considered an intrusive spamming technique as the offers are not specifically tailored to the consumers needs but are just simply indirect promotional techniques to increase brand awareness.

How does location based services have the potential to influence a consumers spending habit?

An article written by the Guardian entitled Retail disruption: how technology is influencing consumer buying habits, discussed the concept of analysing a consumers decision making process against a theoretical model relating to consumer behaviour. The model discusses five stages that consumers go through when purchasing produce and looks at: the search for information, the recognition of needs, pre and post purchase evaluation and evaluation of alternative produce. The article goes on to say that with new technological advancements such as location based services businesses are able to directly market their produce to consumers on a convenient format of their mobile devices; with this digital strategy businesses could use consumer habits and locations to offer services, tailored to cater to their consumers needs (Abidi, 2012).

In conclusion the concept of location based service campaign has many aiding consumption benefits but despite the success of these campaigns it is apparent that although these features have been tailored to meet the consumers geographical needs the personal limitations and annoyances have not fully been considered in all of three industry examples.

References
Becky Paskin. (2010). Best Western achieves highest sales growth following ad campaign. Available: http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Business/Best-Western-achieves-highest-sales-growth-following-ad-campaign. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Campaignlive. (2013). Connected Campaign of the Month: O2. Available: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1180271/. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Danielle DeVoren. (2013). Best Western International Named 2012 eMarketer of the Year. Available: Best Western International Named 2012 eMarketer of the Year. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Marketingsociety. (2014) 2013 winner: O2 Priority Moments, Mobile Marketing – case study, 2015, https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-library/2013-winner-o2-priority-moments-mobile-marketing-case-study
Mazher Abidi. (2012). Retail disruption: how technology is influencing consumer buying habits. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2012/may/22/retail-technology-disruption-consumer-buying. Last accessed 19/05/2015.
Pitta, Dennis A. (2011). Location-based social networking and marketing. Journal of Consumer Marketing. 28 (2), 0.
ThinkwithGoogle. (2013). Full Value of Mobile: adidas Drives In-Store Traffic with Mobile. Available: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/case-study/adidas-and-iprospect-explore-in-store-conversions/. Last accessed 19/04/2015.