GameStop Corp. has partnered with Shelfbucks Inc., the leading Beacon promotion platform for retail stores, to bring an enhanced shopping experience to the company’s national gaming customer base. The agreement represents one of the retail industry’s first and largest Beacon platform solution deployments.
Charlie Larkin, Senior Director of the GameStop Technology Institute, participated in a compelling Q&A with Loyalty360 to discuss this partnership.
Why did GameStop decide to use this platform to enhance its in-store shopping experience?
There are two major areas that contributed to the choice of the Shelfbucks Platform:
- Shelfbucks is offering a full end-to-end service for provisioning, installing, monitoring and supporting Beacons in 36 GameStop stores located in our test markets (Austin and College Station, Texas), including break-fix/warranty replacements. This allows the GameStop Technology Institute (GTI) to better allocate our internal resources towards measuring customer adoption/engagement levels, as well as ensuring we are developing best in class, next generation customer experiences in our stores.
- The Shelfbucks approach services on top of the Beacon platform is unique in that it puts the customers in full control of the experience. As with any Beacon platform, customers must select to opt-in to location services and Bluetooth, but after that the GameStop & Shelfbucks experience will be quite different. Our strategy is not to start by sending messages to customers as they shop the store. The customer’s mobile device will only engage with them upon waving their smartphone near the sensors, which will be branded, with instructions throughout our shelves in stores. We will be able to showcase promotions, including the ability to research products of relevance, in our stores through the customer choosing to engage with the Beacon. As we are operating an industry-standard Beacon platform, we are certainly not limited to this as the only interaction with Beacons; but we do believe that giving customers control of the experience is the right place to start.
What specifically can this platform do to increase customer engagement in GameStop stores?
Overall, our customers are technology savvy, which makes sense given their very nature in being enthusiastic gamers. Resultant of this passion, they expect us to provide solutions, including a shopping experience, that supports their zeal for technology. By creating interactive engagements in the store, we cater to the appetite and need for better awareness of fantastic promotions and products available in our stores, but we are also doing it in a way that is unique and fun.
How will this better engage customers and impact the customer experience?
A big part of our value to customers is the knowledge, passion and expertise of our store associates, who are themselves, gamers. By empowering customers with the ability to engage with a Beacon in our stores we are arming them with the promotional and product information including our top deals, ratings and reviews on products, viewing screenshots and trailers for those products as well as viewing trade values that they demand. These new capabilities are giving gamers that knowledge, passion and expertise for gaming that we ultimately strive to provide. By having the ability to do real-time research in our stores in a simple and fun way, we deliver on the value propositions that are closest to our brand promise: Making your favorite technologies affordable and simple.
How important is it for GameStop to be constantly seeking innovative technologies to augment its customer-centric focus?
By creating an organization, GTI, that is 100% dedicated to innovation, GameStop is not only demonstrating the importance of, but also their commitment to cultivating innovation within the retail space, as well as leading the charge in discovering new technology advancements to drive positive customer experiences.
When did the test markets launch this solution?
Our current plan is to launch this solution in our test markets in Austin and College Station, Texas the last two weeks of September.
What are GameStop’s future plans for use of this technology in its stores?
Our future plans right now are focused on ensuring the Shelfbucks Beacon platform (a) operates smoothly, (b) is adopted, valued, and sought out by our customers (c) and, ultimately, delivers a more informative, valuable, empowering shopping experience in our stores.