Beacon-Triggered Transaction System for Retail
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current mobile device technologies lack efficient mechanisms for businesses to prepare and inform employees about customer arrivals and transactions in real-time, leading to potential delays and suboptimal customer experiences.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a beacon-triggered message exchange system that allows businesses to broadcast messages to mobile devices, enabling the detection of customer presence and triggering background processes to prepare employees and facilitate transactions, such as product pick-ups or service appointments, through a network of beacon devices, mobile devices, and server systems.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If a beacon-triggered message exchange system is implemented, then customer service preparation and transaction efficiency are improved, but device complexity and system infrastructure requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by detecting customer presence via beacon messages before the customer actually arrives at the service point. This triggers advance notification to employees and pre-preparation of transaction elements (such as retrieving items, notifying relevant staff, or setting up service environments), thereby expediting the actual transaction process when the customer arrives.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a message exchange system as an intermediary between the beacon detection mechanism and the employee notification/transaction preparation processes. This intermediary layer handles the complexity of coordinating multiple components (beacon devices, mobile device applications, server systems, and employee notification channels), shielding the core productivity improvement from the full system complexity.
2Measurement precision
If beacon devices broadcast messages to detect customer presence, then real-time customer arrival detection is improved, but energy consumption and device resource usage increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of continuous monitoring, the system uses periodic beacon message broadcasting and triggered response mechanisms. The mobile device application listens for beacon messages at intervals or triggers background processes selectively based on beacon reception, rather than maintaining constant active detection, thereby reducing overall energy consumption while maintaining detection precision when customers are present.
Solution Approach 2:
The beacon-triggered system enables the environment (beacon devices and server infrastructure) to actively notify the mobile device of customer presence, rather than requiring the mobile device to continuously query or monitor for customers. This shifts the energy burden to the infrastructure side, allowing the mobile device to operate in a lower-power listening mode and only activate full processing when triggered by an incoming beacon message.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques and systems for location triggered processes are disclosed. A described technique includes causing an electronic device to transmit a broadcast message, the electronic device being within the vicinity of an establishment; detecting a presence of a user of a mobile device based on receiving from the mobile device a first message that is responsive to the broadcast message; retrieving a transaction record based on a user or mobile device identifier in the first message; generating and transmitting a second message based on the transaction record to facilitate a completion of a transaction associated with the transaction record at the establishment; the second message being configured to provide notification of an arrival of the user and dispatch an employee to meet the user and handle the transaction; and generating and transmitting a third message based on the transaction record to facilitate the completion of the transaction at the mobile device.