Authors:
Lucas Blanck, Adrian Rodriguez, Jonathan Waite
Abstract:
This disclosure proposes a method for incentivizing customers to shop faster by utilizing existing loyalty identification, time spent in store, and an integrated rewards or discounts database.
Background:
While retailers generally prefer to keep customers in the store as long as possible, there are certain use cases or exceptions where the opposite is beneficial.
Problem 1) Busy restaurants fail to maximize profits when customers occupy tables long after they are done eating. Owners can only "rush" customers out of the door by having awkward conversations with them and or individually discussing some sort of perk for eating fast.
Problem 2) During COVID-19, retailers can lose potential business if they build a reputation of too many people in the store due to social distancing guidelines. In this case, retailers face the same problem as above due to a lack of incentive to get customers in and out faster.
Description:
1) Customer enters the establishment and scans a loyalty ID barcode located near the entrance to capture the exact timestamp they have entered the store
2) Customer shops and adds item to their cart/basket as usual
3) During checkout, customer once again scans their loyalty ID barcode as usual to associate it with their order, in this case capturing the estimated time of departure from the store
4) A new system (claim) calculates time spent in store from the two timestamps and applies discounts/promotions to the order based on total time spent in the store
5) The system would provide configurable thresholds (ie. under 10 mins gets 10% off, under 20 mins gets 5% off) as well as a multi-variable algorithm to consider things like size of basket and number of times shopped that same day to prevent overly frequent user abuse of the system
TGCS Reference 2292
