Transforming the Customer Experience through Smart, Interactive and Pervasive Proximity Services

Project Information

bubbleOn

Grant agreement ID: 816565

DOI

10.3030/816565

Project closed

EC signature date 27 April 2018

Start date 1 May 2018

End date 31 August 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

THE BUBBLES COMPANY
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - bubbleOn (Transforming the Customer Experience through Smart, Interactive and Pervasive Proximity Services)

Reporting period: 2018-05-01 to 2018-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Big retail corporations are transforming the manner in which the daily purchases are made. The increase in online purchases leads to a decrease in the attendance of customers in physical stores with a progressive loss of jobs that are not being replaced by new ones in e-commerce. The understanding of the habits and needs of customers is a powerful tool for retailers to create personalised marketing campaigns and recover part of the in-store customers lost.
Our BubbleOn marketing solutions aim to meet 2 major needs in consumer products/BtoC sectors (both distributors and manufacturers):
• Generate traffic and sales in physical stores
• Collect reliable and useful consumer data (i.e. with consumer opt-in).
To meet these needs our 2 types of solutions are:
1) A 1/X mechanism-based gamification program using a cloud-based platform - called Drive to Purchase (D2P).
2) Proximity sensors embedded in our charging stations for smartphones – called The Bubble.
The FS confirms the novelty of our proposal, its technical viability and economic profitability in any of the scenarios proposed. D2P has already aroused great success during the 2 months field test performed in France and Canada.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During Phase I of the project we have studied all Technical, Market and Financial Viability aspects. We concluded that, although the technical development plan for the hardware plus software (The Bubble + D2P) is feasible with our expertise and resources, the volume of business can be dramatically higher if we concentrate our offer in D2P as a standalone product. We have decided to switch our business model to only develop marketing-software activities, with D2P as first in the market and no conflict with competing intellectual property. A prototype of this software product has shown great potential to attract customers to purchase in physical stores in our filed-tests, and the market to which it is directed has a great economic and social value.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The potential of our DriveToPurchase software platform to boost retail businesses sector has been demonstrated in the field tests conducted in various stores in Canada and France, where after 2 months a large increase in sales and the attraction of customers to physical stores was achieved. This success has driven the development of our digital marketing solution with which, according to our detailed financial projections, we expect to acquire a large expansion all over the world with 250 employees and € 150M accumulated revenue after 5 years.

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