Putting Location Data to Work
With each release of the new iPhone – a coveted piece of technology for many people – there is always excitement and hype. The new iPhone 8 recently hit stores (September 22) and it was no exception. We were curious… with all this buzz, which Apple store would see the highest foot traffic? We also wondered if shoppers would rush to the stores on release day and how much the foot traffic would change day-to-day by location.
So, we put our Geo-Fencing with Event Targeting solution to work, creating fences around 10 popular Apple stores (as ranked by CNBC) in order to analyze the foot traffic of mobile users. We looked at major stores in the US (San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, 2 locations in New York City) as well as international locations (Munich, London, Paris, Montreal). We also geo-fenced our local Fort Worth store to see how foot traffic stacked up next to locations in larger cities.
Unique Shopping Habits in Each City
We collected data from September 21 to September 23 in order to identify the change in foot traffic in the days before and after the new iPhone hit stores (September 22). During that timeframe, San Francisco’s Union Square store, and both the 5th Ave and Upper West Side locations in New York City had the highest and most consistent foot traffic – almost twice the amount as the fourth most visited store – Munich. But on the actual release day, NYC’s 5th Ave store took the lead and saw 75% more visits than San Francisco’s Union Square store.
Foot traffic numbers changed from day-to-day and varied by city, showing that local shopping preferences and habits vary widely. As we expected, on release day, most of the tracked locations saw an increase in foot traffic. London’s Covent Garden location saw a 35% increase, followed by Chicago’s Lincoln Park store at 12% and New York City’s 5th Ave location saw a 9% bump in traffic.
However, we found that in Munich, Boston, San Francisco, Fort Worth, Paris and London, shoppers didn’t rush to check out the new products on release day. They may have been working or didn’t want to wait in lines. These cities saw a spike in traffic the day after the release – Saturday. On average these six locations saw a 16% increase in foot traffic. Of note, Munich (23% increase) and Boston (20%) had the highest number of visitors on Saturday.
A few locations actually saw decreases in foot traffic on Saturday. Notable numbers include New York’s 5th Ave store (decrease of 26% traffic) along with Montreal (-18%) and Chicago’s Lincoln Park location (-3%). These stores saw higher traffic earlier with shoppers hurrying to the store on Friday.
Localization is Here to Stay
Our data analysis supports the concept that shopping habits and preferences vary by region, pointing to the importance of a localized programmatic strategy.
As the continued adoption and use of GPS-enabled smartphone grows, more and more marketers will shift location-based marketing to the forefront of their advertising efforts.
By using this real-time data, advertisers can communicate with their audience to send content, offers or other location-based information in order to influence behavior: such as increase visits to a store or location.
Simpli.fi’s Geo-fencing applications, like Event Targeting, enable advertisers to achieve precision of targeting at scale by reaching potential customers at precise locations, and targeting them based on specific date and time windows.
For more information about how to use Event Targeting and take advantage of localized buying behaviors in your next campaign, email us at hi@simpli.fi. And, please read on – the full analysis of these findings and more can be found in the below infographic.
