using gps & gis tools to detect customer locations in ...

USING GPS & GIS TOOLS TO DETECT CUSTOMER LOCATIONS IN RETAIL INDUSTRY VERKA JOVANOVIC1 AND DJORDJE N. VUKELIC2 1

Faculty of Informatics and Computing, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia. iPro Solutions Ltd, Valletta Waterfront, Vault 14, FRN 1914, Malta.

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Abstract: Location based services are one of the leading trends in the new developments of the information technology. Their impact could be seen in the different sectors of economy, especially in the retail sector. Very closely connected to the new paradigm of mobility, detecting the customer locations is becoming one of the most important points for any retail industry. Contrary to isolated use of GPS and/or GIS in specific issues related with customer locations and impact to retail industry, there is a need to formulate the integrated approach. Positioning/locating technologies with the communications networks and GIS as synergy integrator would be the elements to formulate the new framework of location based service. Keywords: GIS, GPS, location, retail, integration, framework. 1. INTRODUCTION Location plays a key role in determining the type and nature of human activity. Location is correlated with, if not a determinant of consumers’ information needs, and product or service choices. In their description of the Where 2.0 conference for 2011, the organizers enroll location as a potential fix for the current economic crisis. As location-aware technologies progress and spread across the globe, the more questions are arising. What can businesses do to stay ahead of the changes? Which technologies are the most efficient and flexible for creating location-aware apps? What does location data tell us about our customers? and how do we use those insights to make money? Location based services are not merely about location, in this sense, and can be read as technologies of mobility. As Creswell (2010) writes, mobility is “the entanglement of movement, representation, and practice”. Physical movement, Creswell continues, is the “raw material” of mobility. Beyond this notion, however, representations of mobility abound. Mobility is thus about the meanings of movement (or the absence of movement) (Creswell, 2011). In this sense, mobility demand the recognition of the spatiality of our worded interactions, despite the ways in which space and time are “tamed”, to use Massey (2005), by some methods for measuring movement. The rise of information technology marks a further enabling of the turning of space into time, while also producing more complex relationships of mobility between the here and there. These geographies of information technology emphasize the ways in which technology imbricates in everyday life. And as mobiledevice hardware and software became more sophisticated -- ‘smart’ -- so did consumer desire for location technology. 2. TECHNOLOGICAL FEASIBILITY AND SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE OPTIONS OF GIS GIS’s development has been more evolutionary, than revolutionary. It responds to contemporary needs as much as it responds to technical breakthroughs. Planning and management have always required information as the cornerstone. Early information systems relied on physical storage of data and manual processing. With the advent of the computer, most of these data and procedures have been automated. As a result, the focus of GIS has expanded from descriptive inventories to entirely new applications involving prescriptive analysis. GIS uses spatial-temporal (space-time) location as the key index variable for all other information. Just as a relational database containing text or numbers can relate many different tables using common key index variables, GIS can relate unrelated information by using location as the key index variable. The key is the location and/or extent in space-time. Any variable that can be located spatially, and increasingly also temporally, can be referenced using a GIS. Locations or extents in Earth space–time may be recorded as dates/times of occurrence, and x, y, and z coordinates representing, longitude, latitude, and elevation, respectively. These GIS coordinates may represent other quantified systems of spatial-temporal reference (for example, film frame number, stream 207

gage station, highway mile-marker, surveyor benchmark, building address, street intersection, entrance gate, water depth sounding, POS or CAD drawing origin/units). Units applied to recorded temporal-spatial data can vary widely (even when using exactly the same data, see map projections), but all Earth-based spatial– temporal location and extent references should, ideally, be relatable to one another and ultimately to a "real" physical location or extent in space–time. Related by accurate spatial information, an incredible variety of real-world and projected past or future data can be analyzed, interpreted and represented to facilitate education and decision making. 3. COMBINED APPROACH - OUTLINE OF THE NEW FRAMEWORK The new framework with the holistic approach for locating retail customers would be encapsulating the following: positioning/locating technologies integrated with the communications networks and GIS as the synergy integrator, Figure 2.

Figure 2: Positioning/locating technologies integrated with the communications networks The integration of the positioning/locating technologies with the communications networks would need to combine the following technologies: GPS, Cell tower triangulation, A-GPS, Cell I, WPS, Browser-based location, RFID, NFC, Table.1. Table 1: Positioning/locating technologies features and functions

Positioning /locating technologies GPS

Cell tower triangulation

A-GPS

Cell ID

WPS

NFC

Description GPS still remains the most popular and most widely spread positioning technology commercially available today. Cell tower triangulation uses the known speed of radio signals (constantly emitted by the mobile phone on UHF frequencies) to calculate the distance from receivers. In geometric terms, by recording the distance of an object from three distinct points, it’s possible to calculate the location of that object Fundamentally, A- GPS tries to address the key inescapable drawback of GPS technology, namely, that a location fix is impossible in most indoor or covered environments. The basic premise of A-GPS is to assist the embedded GPS chip within the handset in securing either a faster or more precise location fix in challenging conditions (such as a weak satellite signal or visibility of only two satellites instead of the required three for a location fix). Cell ID positioning is accomplished by using the serving cell tower (the tower that a mobile device is communicating with), or the cell, and its known position to find the mobile device’s position. A key advantage of WPS, indicating they are a must-have for many mobile applications, is that they work indoors where traditionally GPS hasn’t been available. This is because GPS positioning requires a line of sight to the satellite. The Wi-Fi positioning software uses 802.11 radio signals emitted from wireless routers to determine the precise location of any Wi-Fi–enabled device (Reardon, 2005). NFC is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology that enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 10 cm distance.

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The previous overview of the locating/positioning technologies clearly indicates the different categories of the location information. A descriptive location is always related to natural geographic objects like territories, mountains, and lakes, or to man-made geographical objects like borders, cities, countries, roads, buildings, and rooms within a building. A spatial location represents a single point in the Euclidean space. It is usually expressed by means of two- or three-dimensional coordinates, which are given as a vector of numbers, each of it fixing the position in one dimension. Topology of a communications network, for example, the Internet or cellular systems like GSM refer to the network locations. Geographic Information System (GIS) is the essential key technologies for fulfilling these tasks. GIS, comparing to "classical" information systems, has unique features, which enables the integration of the different components these feature are:  Underlying levels of abstraction  Map Analysis  Modeling  Visualization The upper layer in a GIS, the so-called geographic data model, provides a conceptual view of geographic content in terms of units called features. A feature represents a real-world entity, for example, a building, road, river, country, or city. The lower layer consists of a spatial component, which fixes its location, shape, and topological relationship with other entities, and a description, which provides non-spatial information about the entity, for example, the name of a city or road, or the population of a country. Each feature has a well-defined set of operations, which is tailored to the type of real-world entity it represents. The relation, real-world entity=spatial component+nonspatial information, enables GIS to be implemented in the different forms and the different level. Combining GPS, as still leading positing technology, with GIS, as synergy integrator, was the first step towards the new integrated approach, Figure 3. This framework was successfully implemented in Research & Development project "Geocoding in Malta Using Handheld Devices". Two applications were developed: GPS_MT MobileGIS_MT

Figure 3: Mobile GIS functions, communication networks (SMS & Email), geocoding using mobile GIS, showing the position on the Google map 209

The first one, GPS_MT application was build for the smart phones with the following functions:  Using embedded GPS device  Send GPS coordinates to server with SMS or Email  Integration with Google maps The second application was build for the smart phones with the following extended functions:  Local storage of electronic base maps of Malta (provided by MEPA)  Mobile GIS system functionality (using MapInfo MapX component)  Integration with the functions of the previous application Comparing to the previous application (GPS_MT), this one (MobileGIS_MT) was able to work in any conditions and without any communication network (Vukelic, 2011). The complete solution combines the use of GPS, as initial positioning on the base maps, with GIS functions to do very accurate geocoding. However, in the situation of very difficult conditions, where GPS is not working at all, the minimum GIS functions (like select using the attribute value = nearby object, zooming to practically any level, etc), will give the alternative way of geocoding. In both cases, GIS will be the synergy integrator. GIS with database management have a capability (non-spatial data) to extract and analyze the data from existing Retail system and combine with spatial components (location) - very efficient example of GIS synergy integrator. GIS as part of the framework, again in the role of synergy integrator, would extract the information about the stock from retail system and once the customer is putting the request to find the item, the system will immediately return the stock quantity with the store location. Mapping this information and mapping the information of the customer location - customer will have the clear indication what is the closest store (and even the shortest way to go there!). Small addition of booking the item sending some message (email, voice) to the store will complete the sale process. The GIS system in the our framework will be responsible to have the "roof" integration between inventory of different retail systems and Wi-FI/RFID/NFC which will be location/position technology in the supermarket and shopping center. Similar, the other retail sectors could benefit with the integration. Points of interest (tourism), taxi services (transport) restaurants (hospitality) could have the integrated solution which will use GPS and GIS solution. Take the case of the tourist landing the first time at the airport of the big city and having the short time to visit the city (one day, half day...). Using the new framework, customer will have the list of the most important points of interest for that city and the locations of restaurants close to these places. Considering that taxi service enabled system to allow customer to track the completely drive (using GPS) and pay accordingly, customer could decide what is for him the optimum to visit, points of the interest, just restaurant, store, combination. Furthermore, the hearth of GIS is the analytical capability in spatial analysis, viewing complex relationships between data sets and making better decision. An important use of the analysis is the possibility of predicting events in another location and another point of time (Jovanovic, Njegus, 2008). 4. CONCLUSION The new trends and developments of the information technology have very important or even the critical impact to all spheres of today's economy. Technological mobility, the characteristic of modern world, is changing the traditional meaning of the location and it is opening new horizons in the location based services. Isolated services, which were mainly used to determinate the static type of location/position, will not be sufficient. All above-mentioned effects are shaping and changing all the sectors in the retail industry. Detect customer location (and understand the value of it) is one of the pre-requisites in the modern retail industry. The value of the new framework of integrated approach will be, exactly, in combining other positioning/locating technologies with the communications networks where GIS will be synergy integrator on the different levels. The new research and recommendations will be to create the other prototype of the software solutions based on the above-mentioned integrated approach.

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REFERENCES [1] Creswell, T. (2011). Mobilities II: Still, Progress in Human Geography, p. 645-653 [2] Jovanovic, V., & Njegus, A. (2008). The Application of GIS and its component in Tourism, Yugoslav Journal of operations research, Vol.18. No.2, 261-272. [3] Massey, D.B. (2005). Space, (London: Sage). [4] Reardon M. (2005). Wi-Fi used for location services, [online] CNET News, Available from http://news.cnet.com/Wi-Fi-used-for-location-services/2100-7351_3-5754288.html [Accessed 21 March 2013]. [5] Vukelic, D.J. (2011). Geocoding based of handheld devices. CCSIE 2011, IEEE Conference on Communication, Science & Information Engineering CCSIE 2011, London, UK.

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