Many of the uses of NFC in retail follow from the marketing and advertising applications described in the previous chapter, and many of them lead to some form of payment, which is described in more detail in Chapter 15. This chapter is mainly concerned with applications of NFC which take place in and around retail outlets, and which are within the retailer’s control.

Most of these will fall into one of two areas:

• improving customer management and targeting, and offering tools to customers, and

• increasing the efficiency of store operations.

These are explored in Sections 13.2 and 13.3 respectively below.

NFC benefits

Each phase of a transaction is much more likely to take place on a mobile phone if the previous phase was also mobile: customers who have a voucher on their phone, or details of the product they want to buy, are much more likely to have their phone in their hand when they make the purchase. NFC is a good way to encourage customers to take their phone out of their pocket, in order to achieve some or all of the following benefits.

Customer acquisition and retention

NFC offers an opportunity for retailers to reach new customer groups. Tapping a tag is an impulse activity; an attractively designed program can easily persuade potential customers to tap a tag if they are interested in the product or topic. We saw in Chapter 12 that mobile customers in general can be segmented by their previous history or by the way they define their own interests; they need not be existing customers. To reach these groups, the sales promotion and discount applications described in the previous chapter must be followed up with in-store activities in order to maximize the conversion rate into actual sales. Customers should always be encouraged to tap their phones, at the point of sale or at a suitable kiosk, to see whether they have any offers outstanding.