Rite Aid Replaces Macy’s As The Retail Flag-Bearer For Beacons

Despite all the talk surrounding the game-changing potential of beacons in retail environments, the average customers probably can’t even name a single store where he or she is likely to have been the target of a beacon-based engagement. Part of this could be chalked up to deficiencies in the technology itself, but there’s also the simple fact that no single high-profile retailer has emerged to trumpet beacons’ potential in a way that’s connected with consumers.

Now, though, Rite Aid is assuming the mantle of beacon’s knight in shining armor.

ZDNet reported that the health and wellness retailer recently made the decision to install beacon systems in over 4,500 storefronts across the U.S. — a move that helps Rite Aid supplant Macy’s as the merchant running the single largest, contiguous beacon network in the country. Macy’s had previously been operating a 4,000 beacon-strong network in its stores, but with this news, Rite Aid has now become the newest champion of beacons.

Why is Rite Aid attempting a project that Macy’s saw little success with? It’s hardly as if 500 extra beacons are going to mean the difference between store closures and a new age of in-store marketing, and Dave Heinzinger, communications director at inMarket, which is partnering with Rite Aid to build out an ecosystem of apps to make the beacon networks buzz with functionality, told ZDNet that he agrees. Instead, inMarket and Rite Aid are hedging their bets on a vibrant ecosystem of integrated partner apps that open a new realm of location-based marketing possibilities.

“Beacons on their own require apps to listen for them; otherwise, they don’t do anything,” Heinzinger told ZDNet. “Our strategy has been to build out relationships with apps that people already use, rather than try to reinvent the wheel and get people to download something new.”

While ensuring cross-app and brand functionality might seem like an added value for any beacon campaign, it might be close to a necessity for a retailer like Rite Aid. While Macy’s might have only a handful of third-party brands it carries and has to accomodate for, a single aisle in a Rite Aid store might contain dozens and dozens of different brands. Without an approach that emphasizes navigating these frequently choppy technical waters, Rite Aid’s beacon program would have been doomed, like Macy’s, before it began.

There’s another wrinkle to Rite Aid’s situation that might hint at a more favorable shopping environment than Macy’s enjoyed. In an interview with iMedia Connection, Jason Spero, head of global media sales and strategy at Google, explained that while the average consumer isn’t yet ready to become a dyed-in-the-wool beacon advocate, he or she is becoming more familiar with the idea of being connected to a world of invisible data as they walk down an in-store aisle.

“The consumer knows that he or she is connected and empowered in all these ways,” Spero said. “The consumer also knows that their device has a sense of geospacial relations. You, as a consumer, know that, with your device, at any point, with a couple of exceptions, it can tell you what’s around you to help you solve problems. You can go out and get the world’s information with your connection, or you can map the physical world around you.”

To Spero, this kind of slowly creeping comfort with how beacon technology intersects with consumer behavior has done much the same thing that a landscaping crew would do before a major construction project — flattening the land, removing any major obstacles, dynamiting mountains in the way if need be and then smoothing everything over for the next phase of development.

That, combined with the nature of the products that Rite Aid is selling — will beacons perform better in a vertical selling necessaries, like medicine and personal care products? — could spell success for the retailer, whereas Macy’s saw very little.